


Skyport 7

by LindseyTanner



Category: No Fandom, OC - Fandom, Original Work, original character - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Middle School, Alternate Universe - Space, Disability, Disabled Character, Disasters, Flying, Future Fic, Gen, Major Original Character(s), Middle School, OC, Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, Original Fiction, Original Universe, Outer Space, POV Original Character, Physical Disability, Public Transportation, School, Sky - Freeform, Sky Pirates, Space Pirates, Teen Fiction, Wings, sky battles, teen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-01-05 21:21:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 27,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18374312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LindseyTanner/pseuds/LindseyTanner
Summary: When the colonizers changed the name of the planet Uranus to Skyport 7, they also changed the people who lived there. Now everyone flies around with wings on their backs. Everyone, that is, except for Zane. What can a wingless kid do in a world that revolves around flying? But when a disaster happens that shakes the very foundations of the planet, he might be the only one who can stop it!





	1. Lets Face It...

Let’s face it: nobody wants to live on Uranus, so the first thing we changed when we colonized the planet was the name. The second was ourselves.

Skyport 7 was meant to be the greatest rocket production plant in the solar system: an entire planet dedicated to transportation around the galaxy. For the most part, we succeeded, although Jupiter and Saturn are well on their way to surpassing us. But to be the best, you have to think differently than the competition. Climbing up and down ladders all day to work on the top parts of rockets is a waste of time. So is catching a skybus to get to work on one cliff from your home on another. That’s where the wings come in.

Gene therapy starts before birth. The scientists have perfected it: two wings, perfectly symmetrical and proportional to the owner's body, with enough lift generated to take the wearer and maybe a briefcase or two, over the expanse between landforms.

Except for me.

 The gene therapy didn't catch on with me, so I was born without them. It’s not exactly an unheard-of thing: probably fifty or so other people in my city don't have them either. But it does make life difficult in a world made for wings.

 

_Updates Mondays: BooksByLindsey.wordpress.com_


	2. Twenty Three Flights of Stairs

 

I drag my bike out of my apartment and down the twenty three flights of stairs to the ground. That’s why I get up early every school day: it takes me a good fifteen minutes just to leave the building. I open the door to the outside and drag my bike through it, running over my toe in the process. I mutter savagely as I swing a leg over the bike, set the offended foot on the petal, and kick off onto the sidewalk on the green hillside.

“Sidewalk” is a misnomer: no one ever walks on it. It meanders through the area, heedless of hills, valleys, and any straight lines, and hardly ever sees any visitors, save for me. I would take a shortcut and pedal straight to the bus stop, but it’s too difficult to pedal on the grass. Not that I didn't do that occasionally, especially when I was running late, but I’m doing ok on time today, so there’s no need.

The sky is its usual blue, with clouds that look like cotton balls stuck to an art project, and the grass is belligerently green. I don’t think it’s killable. I’ve never, ever seen it get watered, and it doesn’t rain that often here. The trees are almost as green, all year round.

I live in a pretty small town, but as populated as Skyport is compared to, say, Mercury, it might as well be a small city. But that’s nothing compared to the city I’m headed to; the city my school is in.

I bump along, keeping my balance over rocks and debris and empty cups and soda cans dropped from above. I sometimes wonder if I could walk to school faster than taking my bike, but I tried it once and got there late, so down the stairs and across the park the bike goes. There’s a ground-level storage space for rent close by, but my family can't afford it. I don't mind the exercise. It’s the skybus that I mind.

Overhead, the buildings that sprout as plain metal boxes from the ground come alive ten, twenty, and thirty stories up; with flashing signs advertising everything from wing painting to windblock, and people shouting out of their windows at other people hovering just outside, and colorful stalls suspended between gray metal buildings selling fresh produce from Saturn and trinkets from Earth. Not all of the buildings are massively tall; some are shorter, but they all look like skyscrapers to me. The ground is peaceful compared to all that, but my stomach hurts to watch everything going on up there. I could climb the staircases in the back of the buildings to get to those places, or ask others to fly over and get things for me, but it’s nothing like going in the front of a shop where the displays are.

Some government policy or other made staircases and things mandatory, in part because it’s practical if someone injures a wing or has a load too heavy to fly with, and partly because of us wingless. Sometimes my friends say it’s cool that I get to see “behind the scenes” stuff, but the only backstage things I see are storage spaces. Metal boxes. Fascinating.

We have high-high-rise apartments in Skyport. Windows have become doors. You can see businesspeople on their way to work jumping out of their windows and spreading their wings on the way down.

For that reason, pants are the norm. Dresses and skirts are impractical for flying, and so are usually worn with pants or shorts underneath. To get around wings, we have two-piece top clothing. One on our arms around our shoulders and chests, and one that wraps around our stomachs. Wing bones are thin, but are about as fragile as leg bones. The skin stretching across them is thick, like the skin just below your knee.

The skin on my knees is very thick from all the scars I’ve gotten falling off my bike. It used to be a daily occurrence: the terrain simply isn't meant for biking on. It used to be. Now there are sidewalks in disrepair, and a few twisty roads in some places from back when people travelled by wheels, but they haven't been maintained. I wasn’t about to give up biking, so I got really good at it.

People fly over me: old people floating over to bridge club, business people zipping to work. There are kids around, too; wheeling and diving and showing off on their way to school. I don't know how they can go so fast without wearing goggles to keep the wind out of their eyes, but then again, I go nearly as fast on my bike and I don’t wear goggles. I do have a helmet, though.

I only vaguely remember flying with my mother when I was small enough to be carried. I remember being held tight against her chest, and the smell of the air, and the wind brushing my soft, wispy hair back as I listened to the steady wingflaps that almost matched her heartbeat.

But that was a long time ago, and anyway, there’s a chance that it was actually a memory of the two of us standing in front of a fan, but I can dream.

I coast into the tiny little bus stop, which is just a bench with a glass overhang that protects from rain, although it very seldom rains here, but more than that, the bus stop forces me to see who I’ll be riding with. Today, it’s a mother with four children—one in a stroller, and one walking but still too young to fly—along with an elderly couple who are both falling asleep on the bench.

Catching the skybus is a drag. It’s for the elderly, mostly, and us wingless have to take it, too, if we want to get from one cliff to another. The cliffs are flat-topped landforms that rise out of the abyss, and we live on them. We have to. They’re the only bits of land around. Absolutely nothing but air and gravity is in between the cliffs, and I know that because most cliffs are occupied with some town or city or another and the rest have been explored already.

The old bus wheezes up to the overhang and shudders to a stop. It’s a red, dusky metal thing with a couple of jets on the back, and retractable wings. The wings are absurdly long, unlike the new tech that has smaller, sleeker ones. I think the bus kind of resembles a submarine, like those ones you see over on Neptune, except there is no possible way this thing is watertight. It would leak like a sieve. It has rounded triangles for windows, and smells like a moldy basement. None of the skybuses have been replaced since they were built; they’re relics from before the gene treatment and the wings.

Another passenger staggers up to the stop as the bus arrives. He‘s carrying a load of groceries that are too heavy to fly with. He wouldn’t even get off the ground carrying those.

Everyone gets on the bus, and I wheel my bike on board, too. There’s no space for it anywhere else, or I’d attach it to the outside, so I sit down in a seat and thread the seatbelt around the bike, buckle it up to the ripped blue cushion of a seat next to me, and pull the belt tight. The skybus has a metal floor and ceiling, and these tiny little windows that fog up so bad you can hardly see anything out of them, and it’s usually packed with the elderly and families with small children, at least one of whom is usually coughing.

The lady with the kids sits beside me, and I notice that the kid in her lap has no wings.

She sees me staring and says, “Yeah, I know. We keep hoping he’s a late bloomer. Oh!” She looks at me again and realizes I don’t have wings, either. “Not that there’s anything wrong with the wingless,” she says. “It’s just...I-I just--”

“I know,” I say. “It’s okay. I hope he gets them, too. There’s still a chance.”

Really, once you hit puberty, you either had wings or you didn’t. If you got them late, they might have been stunted, but they usually worked. The bones and the skin that stretches across them have to grow with your body.

It’s an awkward ride to the city: the lady avoids eye contact with me for the rest of the trip. I wouldn’t mind talking to her about it, since she has a reason to ask. I sometimes get questions from random strangers about my glasses and how well I see without them (not very well--it’s like a projector or camera out of focus. I can see colors great, but not outlines or details) but those questions are nothing compared to what I get about my winglessness.

“How do you get around?” people ask me.

“Skybus. Like you do when you get a broken wing or a load of groceries.”

“Doesn’t that put a burden on your family?”

“It used to, but I’m pretty independent, now. I can get where I’m going by myself.”

“Don’t you want to fly?”

“OF COURSE I WANT TO FLY! I SEE YOU SWOOPING AND DIVING AROUND UP THERE THROUGH THE CLOUDS AND OVER THE BUILDINGS AND I WANT TO JOIN YOU MORE THAN I WANT TO BREATHE!” That’s what I want to say. What I really say is “I don’t mind walking.” And usually, I don’t. Usually.

Biking is the fastest thing I have, until I get a pilot’s license, but it’ll be years before I’m old enough to get one, and flying machines are super expensive. The cheapest ones are mostly for industrial use; flying them would be like piloting a dump truck. I could get a job flying one, though. Deliveries or working for the rocket plants. But I have to get through school first.

There's a current of air up at a certain point that runs west to east, and it functions as a sort of highway for fliers. Ships aren't allowed on it, and must go either above or below it. It doesn't go in a straight line, exactly, but it moves in a vaguely easterly direction which is where the city, as well as my school, is from here. So, during rush hour, everyone is on it. We follow under it, and people fly over our heads. It’s so cool to watch them—well, what little I can see of them through the foggy windows. The current propels them along like wind in a ship’s sails. They hardly need to move their wings; if they angle them just right, they soar.

The skybus lands on the outskirts of the city. This is where most of the people in the region work, and it is busy! Skyscrapers line up in a giant grid as far as I can see, while thin towers planted in the ground at regular intervals send power through the walls and into the office equipment. People in shorter buildings hand coffee and pastries through windows to people floating aloft beside them. I get off the bus with my bike after the family, and I look up at the traffic screaming by above my head. The underside of hundreds of cruisers and travel bubbles stare back at me, and I can hear the drivers honking their horns, impatiently waiting to weave around the buildings. There are no lane markers; only signs plastered to the walls nearby, but I don't know how anyone can see them over the advertisements projected next to them.

Air purifier screens are attached to sides of buildings. “No loitering” signs are posted on rooftops, next to the windows of businesses, and lights everywhere keep people from flying into buildings and crashing to the ground. The towers are mostly symmetrical, except for a few more “artsy” buildings here and there, and they have so many windows you can hardly see the metal around them. At least half of them are open, but they lock on both the inside and the outside.

When I pedal over the next hill, a sea of production plants lies before me like a gray blanket stretching to the edge of the cliff.

As I get closer to the factories, I smell sulfur, rust, oil, and byproducts of transport, but I slow down anyway to take in the sights. Trains trundle from one building to another, hauling bits of metal that will later be rockets, shuttles to and from the planets, and also deep space transport where people will eat, sleep, and live while they seek other galaxies. I see float pods, both individual and family-sized, with storage spaces for vacation traveling, and state-of-the-art racers flattened to cut through the air like swords. People mill about down there, on wings and in carts that can move up, down, forwards, backwards, and diagonal--any way the driver wants, as quickly as if it’s yanked by a string.

Sometimes, if I’m lucky, I can see a liftoff. Once or twice I've been late to school because I stopped to watch a rocket launch. Some of my teachers have no patience for such an excuse, but many, especially the older ones, remember the magic of watching a metal behemoth spew smoke out from under it and take off through the atmosphere into outer space. The sheer, quaking power and billowing curtain of smoke as it lifts up and rises skyward, like a giant rousing from a deep sleep, makes my heart pound and my breath stick in my chest.

I start pedaling again, and soon I see my school in the distance.

 

_Updates Mondays: BooksByLindsey.wordpress.com_


	3. The Blue between Night and Day

The outside of my school is mostly made of a glass-like polymer supported by steel beams and surrounded by a tall, gray fence. It’s a really small building by our standards: it’s only three stories tall. It’s just about entirely pearlescent from the inside out, except for the dark windows and outer doors, but I wish they hadn’t added the fence. It makes this place feel like a prison.

I park outside the school building in one of three slots in the bike rack outside. People are flying in and landing on the third floor balcony above me, and I hear them talking and laughing up there.

For someone to land, they all have a different method. Some swoop down and lift sharply up, and then flutter into their destination, some ease down like an elderly person getting into a swimming pool, and others just drop and use their wings as brakes. Still others spiral in, like an airplane circling an airport, or a vulture over carrion. I don't know what I'd do, except I know I couldn't circle like that. Just looking at it makes me feel dizzy.

I’d been given a key to a couple of access doors to the school at the beginning of the year, so I let myself in the ground-floor entrance and pass by several cardboard boxes of extension cords and keyboards and stuff to get to the stairs. Someone had left a long, heavy box of hard drives right at the foot of the stairs where I can’t walk around it. I get down and shove at it enough to move it an inch or two, but that’s not enough for me to get by, so I decide to just walk over it. If they’re going to block my way, I’ll leave a shoeprint on their stuff. It’s only fair.

This happens all the time. People think, ‘oh, it’s not a problem, they’ll just fly over it,” but I can’t. And it’s not just boxes on the stairs. It’s locked doors, and places with no ground-level entrance, and some places that have them but hide them. It’s just really frustrating when you’re trying to go about your day, and things like this keep popping up. A few times is an inconvenience. Often is a problem.

I reach the metal, industrial door and check my holowatch. It’s not a new model, but it’s better than my old one. My old one projected the time on a spray of water, which got everywhere every time I tried to use it. My new one works the same way, but sprays aerosol instead. It’s not messy at all because the aerosol dissipates within seconds. The new watches I see in advertisements are what I really want. One of them sends out micropulses that heat up the air just above it so the molecules glow in the shape of the numbers, but my mom says it looks dangerous. The other new one works more like a magnet and makes the air molecules coagulate like a foamy cloud above the surface of the watch to show the time before they disperse. The holowatch on my wrist says I have two minutes to get to class.

I open the door into a crowded hallway. The black sign on the outside of the door says Maintenance Area, and will lock behind me, but I’ll just use my key to open it again at the end of the day. Students wearing the latest shiny fashions that catch and sparkle in the sun as they fly, walk through the elasti-tile hallway and into their classrooms through white-painted doors. Even in here, there is a breeze, like there is everywhere else. I’m glad of it, because a lot of my classmates wear too much body spray.

I have to slip around people in the hallway. Some of their wings are in the way, because they don’t politely fold them up. The wings are stretched between fragile bones, thin like spindles, and they can fold up behind the person, but not enough to hide them from view: they’re just a little higher than people’s heads. They rise above the shoulders to a soft point, and fold like accordion fans when the people are indoors or just standing around. When unfolded, they’re about as wide across as the person is tall. So a smaller person has smaller wings, and a larger person has larger wings.

My first class is social studies, my favorite subject. I pull open the door and sit down behind the nearest empty desk a few seconds before the bell rings. I can hardly hear the chime over the chattering of all the people in here. There aren’t that many empty desks in this classroom: it’s a popular class, and richly decorated despite the utilitarian furnishings. The classroom came with the rows of desks and a whiteboard. My teacher supplies everything else. Her desk is covered with all kinds of old tech she’d collected from archeological digs; some of them from the original pioneers. Most of them are broken, but you can still tell what they are, or were. A blue pocket calculator with red and white buttons; a bulky, flip-open device that used to pass for a cell phone. There are posters on the walls of long-forgotten times with dates and events lost to history: Billy Joel, The Beatles, Queen. Sages of a bygone era, with only their wisdom left behind, like candles burning in the dark.

My teacher, Miss Pemberson, sits at her desk in the front corner, texting. She has curly blonde hair, and is dressed in a dark green shirt today. She favors loose, baggy clothes, and the reason I notice is that hardly anyone else does because it’s not practical for flying. The wind catches it, and if you’re flying too close to someone, their wing can hit it, too. I mean, she can wear whatever she wants; it’s just different, that’s all. A few people straggle in late and take the remaining seats, and then the teacher looks up.

“Ramundo here today?”

“No, Miss, he’s sick.”

“Okay.” She stands, slips her phone in her pocket, and crosses over to the board bolted to the center of the wall. “Hope he feels better.”

She faces the board and pushes her hand out at it, and then just as quickly draws it back in. The front of the board pops out of the wall, turning the board into a three-dimensional cube sporting the teetering orange and purple logo of the company that had made it, which flickers, and then turns into a picture of a Skyport celebrity. The class snickers.

“Oh, wait, that’s not what… hang on.” Miss Pemberson swipes at the image until it changes color and fades into two round images, spinning against a deep black background. One is yellow-orange and small, and the other is bright orange and swirled throughout, with a spotted, flat ring around it.

“Tell me,” said Miss Pemberson, as she turns to face the class and crosses her arms, “why Saturn thrives, with crops yielding enough to feed everyone in the solar system twice over, while Mercury starves.”

We all call out our guesses:

“Greed.”

“Politics.”

“Laziness.”

“Drought.”

“Transportation,” says Miss Pemberson. “There is a drought, yes, and crops don’t do well in that soil, but the reason we can’t get enough food to Mercury is that we lack transportation. Funny thing, coming from a planet renowned for its rocket manufacturing, but we cannot store enough to feed everyone, and by the time it gets there, between the lengthy journey and the power diverted between fueling the rocket, keeping the lights on, running the toilet, and refrigerating the food, any fresh produce is a stinking mess.

“Skyport was founded to create vehicles, Mercury was founded to create batteries powered by the sun. We need them, and they need food. So,” she asks us. “What do we do about it?”

“Build bigger rockets.”

“Send over nonperishables.”

“Grow more crops closer to them.”

“Find better ways to grow food there.”

More and more answers are given; some I would never have thought of myself. I just know we’re on the verge of a breakthrough when the bell rings. I could stay, though, if I was allowed to. I think most of my classmates would, too.

I see my friends on the way to our second class. Francisco and Stephano are headed to the gym, and they’re talking about the game after school yesterday.

“Did you see that dive Juno did at the end of the second quarter?” asks Fransisco. “Majestic.”

“That was nothing,” says Stephano. “Rhea swiped the ball right out of Narvi’s hands and won the game for them.”

“They would have won, anyway with Skathi playing,” I chime in. “He’s a good luck charm to every team that has him.”

“Not two seasons ago, he wasn’t,” says Stephano.

“That one doesn’t count ‘cause of everyone else who was on the team.”

“Hey, you guys going to the coffee place after school?” asks Francisco. “Supposed to be a band playing.”

“Nah, man, I gotta work,” says Stephano.

“Zane?”

“I gotta work, too,” I say.

“Really? Come on, you guys, you can’t work all the time.”

“Well, our parents aren’t rich like yours,” says Stephano.

We part ways at the entrance to the gym, even though we have the same class. Their second class is flying lessons, which are worthless to me, so I have the coach’s permission to skip it as long as I stay in the gym. That means I have a little over an hour of free time, when everyone else learns how not to fly into buildings, and about the different signs, lights, and signals going every which way, and other important things. Wing traffic has right of way, but if a rocket’s coming, no one’s going to fight with it.

I was given the option to kick a ball around or run laps, but what I usually do is climb up to the top of the web of steel support beams that cross each other just below the clear, domed ceiling, lie down on them looking up, maybe with a leg swinging over the edge, and stare into the deep, overwhelming blueness and imagine myself in it, the wind wrapping around me like a blanket and the sun warm on my back, as I swoop up into the clouds in a foggy mist. When I was young, I would stand at the kitchen counter and push down with my hands until my feet left the ground, and wonder if that was what it felt like to hover like I saw my family doing.

I hear a noise under me and my stomach hits my chest and my heart just about stops because I’m not actually supposed to be up here. Maybe they don’t see me. I look down to see a girl standing under the beams, almost directly under me. I don’t recognize her, but I’m afraid she’ll tell a teacher.

“Hi,” she says. Yeah, she definitely sees me.

“Hi, I answer. She's average height and size, like me, with nondescript facial features, medium skin tone, and long brown hair hanging loosely around her shoulders. She'd fit in easily with any of my female classmates, except...

“I don’t have wings, either,” she says.

“Oh! No, you don’t.”  There are no wings sticking out behind her, and she’s wearing highlighter-pink shoes and a pink bracelet of the same shade. She’s also wearing a dress, which sticks out to me because it’s impractical for flying. It’s blue: halfway between the sky and the seas of Neptune.

Like the sunrise in the middle of the planet, I decide. I’d seen pictures of it. The blue between night and day.

“Do you want to fly?” she asks me.

“Do I what?” I raise my eyebrows and look at her in astonishment.

“Want to fly. You can. I can show you.”

“You can? I can?”

“How much time do we have left for this class?”

“A-about an hour.”

“That’s enough,” she says. “Come on.”

I climb down the support beams and catch up to her at the door.

“What’s your name?” I ask her.

“Thea.”

 

_Updates Mondays: BooksByLindsey.wordpress.com_


	4. The Next Thing I Know

We climb over the fence around the school and walk until we reach the edge of the cliff. Usually, I avoid trouble, and don't do things like sneak out of school, but flying is flying, and it's more important to me than gym class.

There are fences around some, but not all, of the cliff edges, to prevent people from stumbling off, especially young children who toddle around before their wings fully developed. We climb over the fence around the edge, too, where there's enough space to take about five steps before plummeting off.

"So, what's your name?" Thea asks me when we reach the edge. Gravel scrapes against the bottoms of my shoes, and I can see the next cliff over; just a smudge in the distance. The wind swirls up out of the abyss and hits us in the face.

"Zane," I answer.

"Years ago, my dad said you could theoretically fall off the cliff and slow down on your way to the core, and then climb back up. He said it would be easier to climb up while you're closer to the core because it's pushing you so strongly. The further away you get, the more you have to rely on your own muscles."

"Why? What would slow us down?"

"The air core."

"Air core?"

"It's a machine in the center of the planet that blows air outward and keeps the cliffs in place. It's also why the ships can float even though their wings aren't very big, and the people can fly."

"An air core?" I ask.

"Yes."

"Like a giant hairdryer?"

"Yes."

"I don't believe you."

"Well, you don't have to. I can prove it."

The next thing I know, she takes a running leap, right off the edge of the cliff.

"Thea!" I shout, and I lunge for her to pull her back, but I miss. I watch her hair stream above her over her blue dress as she shrinks into a dot and disappears into the darkness.

I kneel there, breathless, while my heart pounds. I just watched someone die.

I should go get help, but what can I do? She's dead. Unless she was right about the core. What can I do? Maybe she was right. I hope she was. If she wasn't, she's dead.

I get up and the gravel crunches under my weight. I pace back and forth, all the time wondering if I should go get help, and what the point of it would be if I did, and if I'd be blamed for her death. But mostly, I really, really hope she's right.

I wait. And wait. And wait.

And then I hear something: rocks shifting. Something moves in the canyon.

I look over, half-expecting to see the zombified corpse of Thea hauling itself back up the cliff to seek revenge on me for not catching her.

But it's not a corpse. It's Thea, alive and grinning from ear to ear.

"Your face! You should have seen it!"

"If you were up here, I'd push you over again."

"No way: I'd be too tired to climb up a second time. You can, though. Want to try? You don't have to if you don't want."

"Um..." The offer is tempting, if she really flew down there... "I don't know."

"You don't have to. Don't feel pressured to."

I think she's getting impatient with me. "Yes, I know," I say. "I'm a chicken. I disappoint everyone all the time. I'm like a disappointment with legs."

"No, I just mean that jumping off cliffs seems to go against the life-preservation instinct. I'm only used to it because we have something similar on Jupiter."

"Is that where you're from?"

"Yeah."

I look hesitantly over the cliff. The answer is yes, but how could I just  _jump_?

I lean over and feel air rushing into my face, in my ears, and brushing my blond hair back away from my forehead. It's the same strength of wind that I feel riding my bike. How could it hold me up?

I was always warned to stay far away from the cliff edges in case I fell. I was told that I would die; that I might pass out on the way down, but I'd smash into whatever was at the bottom of the cliff. I look down, and the canyon and the brown rock just draw together into darkness. I swipe at my nose with the back of my wrist.

Mom always says, "Just because all your friends can jump off a building doesn't mean you should, too." The original proverb goes a little differently, but Mom cares nothing for the history of things, only for her present use of them. And she uses them often.

Surely the air I feel isn't enough to lift me off the ground. I'll fall into the cliff face and be pulverized, or into the core and melt to death, or if there isn't a core (and I can't imagine there not being a core of some sort) I'd plummet through the planet and fly out the other side into space. I shudder.

"Make sure you push yourself out and away when you jump or you'll end up with a skinned elbow." Thea holds up a scarred arm. She got something like that and she's still jumping? I admire her determination, but I still think it's an impossible idea.

But I take a deep breath anyway, and fall.

I turn and look up to see the sky leaving me in a shrinking circle, now the size of a tire, now the size of a ring. The cliffs beside me are brown blurs getting darker fast, like I'm hurtling down an elevator shaft after the ropes are cut, and my stomach is far above me, back where it's safe. I flail and grab for the sides of the cliff, but they're much too far away. I try to scream, but my breath is torn away from me and I can't hear myself over the wind. The air is strong and as loud as a hurricane pushing against me, and I push back, too, with my arms and legs beating against gravity, against the air, against death. And then I realize—I've stopped falling. Trembling, I look up. The rock face in front of me is stationary. No, not completely. It moves and bobs like a ship on the ocean. I'm hovering.

Had I grown wings in my terror? I reach up and brush my fingers along a shoulder blade. No. There are no wings.

There is enough light shining from above and below for me to see well enough. I look down at a silver machine the size of a beach ball floating in the air surrounded by the bottoms of the cliffs, as if an invisible force field is around it that the landmasses sprouted from.

No, the machine isn't that small; it's just far away. I measure it against the cliffs and realize that it's almost as wide across as the cliffs are tall.

All at once, my stomach catches up with me, but I resist the urge to puke because I know exactly where it would go: it would be blown right back in my face. Instead, I swim over to the nearest cliffside and wedge my hands and feet between the rocks. I feel better having something sturdy to hold onto, but the wind blowing up my shirt and pants legs is uncomfortable. I'm glad my glasses didn't fall off in the rush, but I'm not surprised, as they'd been plastered against my face by the air the whole time. I look down at the machine again.

There are vents all over the thing—I can see vague details from the distance I'm at—and they alternate with dark rectangular holes in the metal. Air intake and output, perhaps? There is space between the machine and the cliff bottoms that face it. Maybe the machine really is keeping them up. It had certainly kept me airborne, and it was a good thing it had: there's a rocky brown landform directly underneath it that would have knocked my brains out if I'd landed on it. The noise is deafening down here, and the air smells metallic and oily. I look up at the pinprick of light that I'd fallen from. What a long climb. Maybe Thea was right about getting to fly, but I don't know if getting the chance to float like this is worth all the work it'll take to get back to the surface.

I'm running out of time before class ends, so I start the climb. It's much easier than I thought it was going to be: the air lifts me up and it's like climbing a ladder underwater. I have no fear of falling, now, except that I would have to start all over.

Handholds appear regularly. Rough gravel and rocks shift and crunch under the weight of my hands and feet, and I see bits of it sprinkle upward and get blown right past me. I look over at the cliff next to me, which curves up and farther away from me the higher I get. There isn't a single place with no handholds. I wonder if that was intentional, or if the air coming out of the machine had just worn holes in the rock over time.

The farther away I get from the machine, the more difficult it is to climb. Halfway up, I need a rest.

How much time do I have until flying class ends and we'll be noticed missing?

I look at my watch, and an aerosol spritz flashes the time above my wrist. Class is almost over, and I have such a long way left to go.

That girl. I'll never take her advice about jumping off cliffs again. Although floating there, suspended from the ground in perfect freedom... that was pretty nice.

But falling from that height is not something I want to do again. Ever. It makes my stomach sick just thinking about it.

I reach the top and pull myself up with five minutes to spare.

"You're insane," I say to Thea.

"A little."

We walk back to the gym together because I'm too tired to run, even if we do risk showing up late. I wonder if I can just skip the rest of the day and go home and take a nap, but school is too important for me to do that. Thea and I walk through the doors just as the bell rings and the gym floods with students winded from their flights. Thea disappears into the crowd, but my friends find me almost immediately.

"We learned how to do quick stops today, and turn while upside down!" says Stephano.

"And a bunch of boring stuff, too," says Francisco, "like what the yellow lights on the top of the buildings mean as opposed to the yellow lights on the bottom of them, and what we're supposed to do when they blink."

"Oh yeah, super boring," says Stephano. "You'd've hated it."

"Guys, it's fine. I wonder what we're doing in math today."

Soon, it's lunch time and I have a sandwich in one hand and my tablet in the other, and Francisco and I are comparing answers to our math homework. On some planets, they don't give homework anymore, but Skyport is behind the times in that department, so I plot ellipses during lunch. I do as much homework as I can, during lunch and right before bed, but if it doesn't get done, it doesn't get done. My family needs me to work.

"I think it's 12." I say.

"You do? I must have lost a decimal place somewhere. I got 12 million."

I see Thea again, standing in line to get her lunch, and I want to talk to her, but I have to finish this homework because I won't have time to do it later. I have a business to run when I get home.

 

_Updates Mondays: BooksByLindsey.wordpress.com_


	5. Chapter 5

The first word that comes to mind when describing my apartment is clean. Mom keeps it that way. Militantly. Every sock is folded, every dish is washed and put away immediately after we use it (and sometimes she doesn't even wait until we're finished with it before she picks it up), and not a single grain of dust can be found anywhere. And she does all of this between delivering packages to the nearby clifftops and doing paperwork.

Dad works with plastiglass at a travel bubble plant not too far from the house, and after work, he joins her. They share the work of running the business equally, and I'm a part of it, too.

Every day, I hide my bike in the bushes outside the building, go in and grab a quick bite to eat and talk with Mom and Dad, pick up that day's deliveries and take them downstairs to my bike. I can only deliver to addresses on my clifftop, but I get to the people's houses fast. My bike is even part of our slogan: Wings and Wheels Delivery.

We accept tips.

There’s a rinky dink little delivery system for this part of the planet, but no one ever uses it because it’s notoriously slow. It's so much faster for small companies like ours to get stuff where it needs to go.

The thing about living in a transportation world is that everything moves so quickly, we're afraid of getting left behind. Dad spends all day working, and when he comes home, he works some more. Mom runs half the business, too, and by the time she does paperwork, deliveries, and cooks dinner, she's exhausted. No: it's a step beyond exhaustion. We need more people working for us, but we can't afford to hire anyone.

Our apartment kitchen is dark yellow, and has a scratched table and a stove stained with tomato sauce. Our kitchen always smells nice: we have this air freshener cleaning solution that changes scent based on whoever is smelling it. To me it smells like apples and rain, Mom says it smells like cherry cheesecake, and Dad says it smells like the cologne that his dad used to wear.

Mom stands at the sink with a colander in her hands. She has short hair, like most people do, to keep it from getting tangled in her wings. If anyone does have long hair, they usually keep it in a braid.

When she turns to greet me, her wingtip brushes the counter.

“Hey, how was school?”

“It was okay. Nothing interesting happened.”

She’s always in the middle of cooking dinner when I get home. I don't know how she does it; finding time to cook and do housework in between running the business and stuff, but she does. It amazes me.

Dad comes in shortly after I do, and by that time, we’re all starved. We're having vegetable soup today: I can smell it cooking. Mom has already cleaned up the tubes that the soup base came in, but the peelings from the vegetables fresh from Saturn are still sitting on the counter next to the peeler. She sweeps them into a trash chute and brings the food to the table.

Mom and Dad and I eat and talk about work until the conversation turns to my schooling.

“So what do you want to do after you graduate?” Dad asks me. It's not like we haven't had this conversation a million times, but I still don't know the answer.

“I guess I could keep doing deliveries,” I say. “I can work full time since I won't have to go to school anymore.”

“But is that what you _want_ to do?” Mom asks. “You have options you know, even without your wings. You could go into finance, become an accountant. They don't need wings. Or in to the church. Or…”

“Or architecture,” says Dad. Make more accessible buildings. Or you could check out the travel bubble dealership. They're always hiring.”

“I'll think about it,” I say.

Our kitchen and living room are side-by-side, and our living room doubles as our dining room. We have two rooms off to the side: one bedroom for my parents and one bedroom for me. Plus the bathroom.

Just about everyone, including us, lives near the pole facing the sun, except for a few research stations in the dark on the other side. Over here, we have blackout curtains over our windows so we can sleep. Mine are forest green on the inside and they match my bed sheets, and coincidentally, also the poster I have push pinned to my wall above the bed. Not that I need the blackout curtains most of the time: usually I'm so tired after work, I crash into bed and don't wake up until my alarm wakes me up. There’s nothing I dislike more about my house than my alarm clock. It's programmed to scream at me, or at whoever it wants to wake up. And it's not gentle about it. It’s steadfast and punctual, as a clock should be and wakes me up every morning at the same time, including on weekends, but I can't get it to stop. It's voice controlled, but only by the voice that it was originally programmed with, which is not mine. I bought it secondhand. I could probably open it up to get at the internal workings of it, but I don't want to break it because it is punctual and it does wake me up on time, so every morning I mumble threats at it until it wears itself out.

There's also a research station on the pole facing the sun, but I have no idea what they research. Solar power, probably. We all use it because we're always in the sun. It would be wasteful not to. Just like how Jupiter uses wind power because they have so much of it. Most of our new tech is solar-based, nowadays, but the old tech and backup power, is all nuclear.

After dinner, I get ready to make the deliveries. I put my helmet back on first. It’s brown and it's one of those ones that shapes itself to fit whoever is wearing it. I wish it could change colors, though. It's an ugly square pattern. But it’s a helmet, and I’m happy with it.

I bring the parcels downstairs and put them on a big-wheeled wagon I keep hidden in the bushes which I hook to the back of my bike, and I take off, bumping over rocks and dodging potholes all the way. My parents deliver to the five cliffs nearest ours, and when they get big or heavy packages to deliver, they sometimes have to fly together, one holding each side. I, on the other hand, can just set the box on my wagon and pull it along with my bike.

My bike is red and I love it. I love it more than I love most people. We've been together for years, racing through the park together, riding the bus together, and running all over the nearby neighborhoods delivering packages together. It's taped up, now, where the seat ripped from years of putting my weight on it, and the handlebars don't match because I've replaced both of them twice, and spokes are missing from the wheels in places. As a matter of fact, I keep a multi-tool in my pocket in case my bike breaks. The tires are self-sealing, but the older the rest of it gets, the more often things need fixing.

I haven't fallen off my bike in years, and I've never, ever, damaged a customer's order.

But today, either I’m not paying attention, or the pothole just pops up out of nowhere, but I hit it hard and go sprawling all the way over the handlebars and onto the pavement.

My hands are scratched up from the gravel, and my knees will be bruised up later, but I'm not worried about me, I'm worried about the packages.

I push myself up off the ground and pick up the boxes in a panic. I run my hands over them, inspecting them for smashed corners or rips.

No damage, no damage--

Oh, no. One of them has a corner all bent up. I read the label: specialty metal parts for the governor’s secretary, to be sent directly to… to the office of the president of Skyport! Of course it has to be for someone important. What do I do? My family has guidelines in place for when packages are damaged, but I've never had to use them before. I don't know what to do, and now I'll have to bring this back and show them, and they might not trust me to do deliveries anymore, and...

No, wait. I'm panicking and it’s not helping matters.

I look at it again to see just how bad the damage is.

It's just the corner that’s bent. I straighten it out as best I can, and it looks okay to me. I hold it up to my ear and tilt it back and forth carefully, listening for the tinkling sound of broken glass. Then I shake it gently. Nothing seems to be broken, and even if it is, they might not blame us. They might call the manufacturer instead, and ask for a refund or something. That would be best. I put it with the others and get back on my bike. I have deliveries to make.

To get to the addresses, I have to pass this one building that’s home to the creepiest person ever. I'm not allowed to go anywhere near that place. Mom or Dad deliver over there, but they rarely order any packages, anyway. As for the other people, I know most of them around here, and they all recognize me, but I have no idea who a few of them are. It's not that they just moved, here, it’s just that there are a lot of them, and some of them I've never seen them. Every time I deliver packages to their doors, they're never home.

I do know some people, though. For example, there's Mrs. R. who used to be a singer in the city, and moved out here for the quiet. She still wears sparkly clothes and her hair all poofy. It's even higher than her wingtips. She actually has her own house. Land is at a premium because the clifftops aren't very large. Anyone who has land either inherited it from their family from way back, or else they were very, very rich. Mrs. R. is extremely rich, and her house is little. I've only seen five houses in my life, and all of them have belonged to celebrities. I'm not complaining;  I like my apartment, and I like having neighbors my age close by to hang out with, and if something bad happens, they're right there and more than willing to help. But those houses I've seen are nice.

Ms. Torres in the apartment next to her owned a business until she retired, and now she spends all her time doing hologram puzzles, which I deliver to her on about a monthly basis. Shaniya and Raniya are twins, and they live in the same apartment building across town, but in different apartments. They’re always taking on new projects; lately they’ve been rebuilding an old tech mini-rocket. Can’t wait to see it when they’re through.

There are loads of homes I visit, but by far, the person I deliver the most packages to is a little three year old kid obsessed with building blocks. Every day it seems I'm carting a box of blocks over to that place. That family must be rich. Those things are expensive.

I bike to the first address and slow to a stop when I get there, and with my bike leaned over a little and my foot on the ground to keep it steady, I look straight up at my destination. Uggh. It’s up on the highest floor. Why don't any of these places have elevators?

As much as I grumble about it, I know exactly why they don’t have elevators. Years and years ago, after the gene therapy became widespread, someone deemed them inefficient and unfashionable, so no one would buy or build them anymore.

There's this one lady, though, who's from Neptune, and she's always ordering things. I don't mind delivering to her, though. She lives on a lower floor, and she never seems to leave the house, so she's always there to talk. But most importantly to me, she's wingless. I always put her house in the middle of the list, so I can give my legs a break from biking around and running up and down stairs.

The Neptune lady, Mrs. Hobbes, is super old, and her dark skin is wrinkled like tissue paper and hangs off her cheeks. She walks around her apartment with a cane, and today, she's dressed in a shirt with all the colors of Jupiter on it.

Most places don’t have welcome mats, but hers does, and I dutifully wipe my feet before entering her home. Her apartment is small, although she is very rich. I can tell she is because of all the jewelry she wears and her enormous collection of tiny rabbit figurines. Yet another thing I’ve never seen: real rabbits. Or any other kind of animal. I understand they outnumber humans on Earth, but they were never brought here, or if they did manage to make it here, they kept themselves hidden.

Mrs. Hobbes also has a smaller collection of needlepoint nature scenes from the moons that she’d done herself hanging on the light brown walls. The floor is gray plastic carpet fiber, and it squeaks when I walk on it.  She has an intricately-patterned purple and gray couch pressed against the wall that’s smaller, but much less worn, than the beige one at my house, and a purple armchair off to one side of it, and a wooden table with a crystal lamp between the two. A shelf with a projection entertainment center on it stands against the wall that the armchair faces, and a dining table is behind the chair. The table is made of glass, and has a type of golden metal for its legs. The four chairs around it are wooden, and match each other, but not the table. I think they’re probably antique.

Mrs. Hobbes sits down in her armchair and pokes the couch with the end of her cane.

“Sit down,” she says. I do. It’s not a couch that you sit _in_ ; it’s a couch that you sit _on_. The cushions sink down about as much as concrete does when I put my weight on it, and I can’t imagine that it’s because I don’t weigh very much. I’m of average weight, and height, and build, and everything else. I mean really, really average. The couch is just stuffy and uncooperative.

Mrs. Hobbes gives me cinnamon cake and tells me about life on Neptune and about exploring the asteroid belt around Saturn. Some of the stories I’ve heard before, but I happily sit through them again because they’re interesting, and she eventually gets to stories that I _haven’t_ heard, and plus it gives my legs a break, which I appreciate.

When her stories are over, she allows questions, but never before, and never interrupting the story.

“If you could get wings, would you?” I ask her.

“As old as I am, the only thing I would do with them is knock things over,” she says.

“Before then. If you were younger.”

She sits back and thinks, and sips her tea. I sip mine, too, now that it’s cool enough to drink without burning my lip, and the flavors of cinnamon and cardamom fill my mouth and warms me from my ears to my stomach.

“I’m not going to say I didn’t feel a twinge of jealousy in my younger years, seeing them swooping and diving up there. But I felt the same way back on Neptune when my friends swam circles around me. There’s always going to be someone better than you at something. You just have to find what you’re good at and do it well.”

“I’m good at riding my bike,” I said. “But I don’t want to do that forever.”

“Of course not. Your family runs that delivery business, and you want to move on to bigger and better things. What is it that you want to do?”

“I want to get my pilot’s license, but I’m not old enough.”

“Well, then, set it as a goal for yourself for when you do get old enough and start working toward it now. You have to study for it, so start now. Learn everything you can about it, and do well after you get that license. You’ll rise to the top, wings or not.

“And don't you be complacent, thinking, 'oh, if it’s meant to be it'll come to me,' or nonsense like that. No, you have to work for what you want. And after you get it, or while you're getting it, bring other people up there with you, don't keep it all to yourself.”

“It?”

“Your wealth, your wisdom, your help. Don't be a miser. You're not the only person who will get you where you're going to be, so don't act like you did it all on your own without help. So after you reach your dream, turn around and help others reach theirs. Don't let it stop with you.”

The worst part of my job is always dragging my bike back upstairs and into my apartment after the deliveries are done. Mom or Dad is usually there to lift one end of it while I carry the other, but I guess they’re still out doing deliveries today, so I pull the bike up the stairs myself, and the tires bounce on the stairs.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

The back end of it lifts up all of the sudden and Dad is there holding it. I take one end and he takes the other, and we carry it into the apartment together.

 

_Updates Mondays: BooksByLindsey.wordpress.com_


	6. Don't Pity Me

The System United organization is in charge of policing between the planets, and I mean that both literally and figuratively. They go after space pirates in the vast chasm between the planets in their armored rockets, and they investigate system-wide threats on the planets themselves. They don't really seem to care what happens on Skyport unless it impacts somewhere else, too. But I suppose its best that they do specialize and leave the planets to police themselves, if only because the System is so big. They probably don't have enough people to have a strong presence everywhere.

There are both large and subtle differences between the planets, but most are subtle. We rely on each other in a delicate web of cooperation. For example, Saturn supplies the vast majority of food for the entire system, and delivers to supermarkets everywhere via Skyport-made shuttles. From my conversations with Mrs. Hobbes, it seems like there's no difference between any of the planets' inhabitants. All of the planets are multicultural, but Jupiter is the real hub of diversity. Saturn is a close second. Skyport falls somewhere around the middle, but I see loads of different people just at school, so I wonder if that's changing.

Speaking of school, I have to go there again today. I wonder if Thea is going to be there today. She probably is. But I have no intention of going with her and jumping off the cliff again, or climbing up it, either. Once is enough for me.

I have toast and potato soup for breakfast, which I spill on my white shirt, but it blends in, so it doesn't matter. My bike's nestled between the back of the couch and the wall, and I drag it forward and free.

It's a pretty uneventful day up until I'm walking to the gym.

"What's it like not being able to fly?" A guy I don't know comes up to me and asks me this while I'm trying to get to class. He's dressed in a bright white shirt and pants, and his hair is pretty long for someone with wings. I see Stephano and Francisco not too far ahead of me, and I want to ask Francisco if he went to that coffee place, but this guy, and his friend who walks up next to him, is blocking my way.

"You can't ask him that!" says his friend. He's dressed in gray and blue, which doesn't make my eyes hurt as much, and his dark hair is super short.

"Why not?"

"It's rude!"

"I only want to find out."

"I don't-," I say, but they cut me off.

"But it's rude! You can't ask people about stuff like that. Go look it up yourself."

"But his answer could be different."

"What if he doesn't want to talk about it?"

"He doesn't have to, but I still want to know."

"Guys, I-," They cut me off again before I can even start my sentence.

"He probably gets questions like this all the time, and he's probably sick of it. Do you go up to people and ask them about their other differences? Eye color or whatever?"

"Well, no, but, if he wants to tell me, he can, I'm just wondering. I don't mean to be insulting."

I finally raise my voice loud enough to be heard. "Guys, I don't really know how to answer that question. I've never flown with wings, so I don't know what it's like to have them or not have them. And I don't know what it's like to have them and lose them. It just is."

"Oh," says the first guy.

"Sorry that's a disappointing answer."

"Nothing to be sorry about. That's the truthful answer. It's not disappointing at all. It's just how it is."

He turns to his friend and says: "And I do not go up to people and ask them about their eye color, and even if I did, it would only be someone I knew and cared about..."

I walk away and let them have their discussion. Loudly. Taking up the whole hallway. The thing is, with winged people, when their emotions fly, so do they. If they get angry or excited, their wings start to unfold, sometimes without them realizing it. But often, like those lizards on Earth do with the frills around their necks, they unfurl their wings to make themselves look bigger; sometimes to show off, and sometimes to frighten, like two cobras circling before they fight. However, this leaves the wings open to attack, and they are fragile. The wings aren't armored or anything. They're just skin. They heal quickly, sometimes with scars. I'd seen a few people with jagged scars that ran down the entire length of their wing. One instance was in was a mug shot of a sky pirate. And a person would be unlikely to bleed out from it, seeing as there weren't any major arteries in them, but they'd be laid up for a few weeks until they healed. And in the meantime, they'd have to take the skybus like me.

When I was little, and I mean  _really_  little, I used to enjoy the attention, but as I got older, I just wanted to fit in and be like other people. I got tired of the questions, but now I kind of answer on autopilot. Sometimes. Is the person asking is mean or rude, I don't answer at all, because I don't have to.

There she is. Thea is standing outside the locker rooms trying to reach something high up on the touchscreen bolted to the wall. Another of our classmates, Rachael, is there, too, and they're having a conversation.

"Don't pity me," says Thea. "Just lend a hand if I ask for it. Can you pull that down so I can see?"

"Sure thing." Rachael jumps up with a boost from her wings and Thea's dress and hair fly straight back as if she'd opened the door to a hurricane on Jupiter. Rachael touches the screen and drags the box down to Thea's eye level.

"Thanks."

"Anytime." Rachael smiles at Thea, pulls open the brown door to the locker room towards me so that I can see the sign on the outside of it, and walks in. We don't actually have to change clothes in there; it's just for the sports teams, but it's a handy place to lock up our backpacks and stuff while we're outside, or, in rainy weather, in the gym.

"Hey, Zane," says Thea.

"Hey."

"Do you want to fly again?"

"No! Are you kidding me?" I say it a little stronger than I mean to, and Thea looks hurt for a moment.

"You didn't like it?"

I kind of feel bad about snapping at her, until I remember the sheer terror I'd felt falling like that, and nearly losing my lunch over it, and my regret lessens. "I was terrified! It scared the living-" I searched for the right word that would convey the life-and-death fear I'd felt. "The—the living everything out of me!"

"You were safe the whole time."

"I didn't know that until I hit the air cushion. What was that thing, anyway?"

"Dad said it's the core of the planet. Because Skyport used to be a gas giant, some group of people—the colonizers, I think—built the core and put it in the center of everything, and then the cliffs were built out of asteroids carved up and dragged in, and the core holds everything up."

"Pretty big job for a machine like that."

"Yeah."

"Anyway, yeah, it was fun floating there, and yeah, it kind of gave me the sensation of flying for a little after my heart stopped trying to drumroll its way out of my chest, but I really don't think the climb and the falling,  _especially the falling_ , is worth it."

"Oh. Okay. I guess I'll go alone, then."

"Wait, you do this every day?"

"Yeah, unless it's raining or something. Makes the handholds slippery. I wouldn't mind falling off, but I'd be late to class."

"Do your parents know you're jumping off cliffs?"

"Well, no, but they're the ones who told me about the air core in the first place, and how it's possible for people here to fly, and how it blows stronger on stuff closer to it, like the cliffs, so they're probably okay with it."

"You just want to fly."

"I'm perfectly content being just the way I am. Flying's fun. And I like the drop. You don't?"

"Words cannot express how much I would never like to do that again."

She wrinkled her nose in distaste. "Suit yourself." She turns and walks to the door.

"See you later," I say. The door opens and shuts again, and then she's gone, and I head toward the gym. My usual spot is waiting for me, and it's a beautiful day. I climb up the white support beams and lie down where they crisscross underneath the dome, and there's no one around, and the gym is quiet. The sun is just in the right spot behind a thick cloud, and I don't have to shade my eyes with my hand, so I fold my arms behind my head and relax.

The warm sun shining through the dome and onto my face and the quiet of the empty gym lulls me into a half-sleep. My eyelids drift closed. Just a few minutes' nap. I'll be awake and in the locker room before my classmates make it back inside. Just a few minutes.

Bam! Something hits the window hard and I nearly jump off my perch. Francisco is on his hands and knees on top of the dome, flapping his wings but not going anywhere. I think it's a joke at first: my friend realized I was there and tried to startle me. But the look on Francisco's face says something is seriously wrong. I look past him at our classmates, who are no longer flying, but falling out of the sky. Some hold their wings taut and glide to the ground, while others simply plummet, their fall slowed by their wings acting as parachutes. Two more students land on their hands, knees, and backsides on the dome, cracking it in several places. I scramble down the support beams before the dome breaks and the students knock me to the ground, and without wings to slow me down before I hit the floor, I guarantee I'd get the worse end of it.

My first thought is to go get help, but my second thought stops me in my tracks: Thea. Has she jumped already?

 

_Updates Mondays: BooksByLindsey.wordpress.com_


	7. Like Vultures

I run as fast as I can to the door and slam into it, knocking the student behind it backwards onto the ground. I would have apologized, but there's no time. I've got to stop Thea from jumping.

I dash through the city as people rain down around me. They're panicking as they fall, even though they aren't going fast enough to get more than a sprained ankle. Traffic's stopped completely, but their horns still work. It's all I hear, over the shouting of frightened people. I get caught in one person's large, cologne-scented wings, disentangle myself, and keep running. I hope she went to the same spot. That's where I'm headed.

On top of the hill, I see a green figure that grows clearer as I approach. It's Thea, running towards me.

"Thea!"

"Zane!"

She comes up to the hill and stops, gasping for breath. I join her there, out of breath myself.

"I felt it just before I jumped," she says. "The air's slowed down. It's not enough to keep people up anymore."

"Do you think it's the air core?"

"I think that's the only thing it could be."

"What do we do?"

"I don't know!"

The local robot force flies in formation over our heads, off to help people. Good. I'm sure they'll solve the crisis and everything will get back to normal.

But no sooner do I think that than a rusted silver ship with graffiti all over it sinks into the atmosphere. I watch it come closer and closer, until its boxy frame sits level with the tops of the skyscrapers. I can tell from its flat shape and massive size that it was used to haul trash around in a previous life, before it outlived its usefulness and was abandoned. It still has scrapes and dents around its loading bed from heavy metal equipment getting dumped in it. Its front windshield is coated with a silver substance that prevents me from seeing in, but I already know who's piloting it. Sky pirates.

A giant robot turns to face it, but waits until its closer to confront it. The robots were actually built on Jupiter when the scientists were still doing exploratory missions over there, long before the hubs were built and Jupiter was colonized. That planet is absolutely gigantic, but that has almost nothing to do with its gravity. It's a gas giant, like Skyport, except it doesn't have the cliffs like we built. It's all gas, all the time. But its gravity is only double that of Earth. Crazy, huh? Anyway, people still needed something to help them get around, because double gravity is heavy, no matter how you look at it. That's where the suits came in. They're robotic, with screens on the inside, and respond to controls from the driver, but more than that, they're bulletproof, and I mean everything from projectiles to laser blasts. They are super strong and they can lift up a ship and move it out of the way, and they are radiation-proof, too. Overall, they're useful to have in an emergency. The main thing about them, though, around here, anyway, is that they can both run and fly.

Our gravity here isn't nearly as strong as Jupiter's, but we did buy the robots. They're clearly humanoid shaped: they have arms and legs and a head, but there's no way they would be mistaken for human. For one thing, they're twice as tall as our average height, and five times as wide. The emblem of Skyport is painted on their chests: a turquoise circle with a rocket going through it.

The robots spend most of their time directing traffic, or, the people inside them do, at least. When winged people commit a crime, the robots have to catch them, and so they have to cover both land and sky very quickly. Human pursuers can be outflown and outrun, but a robot built for speed and strength can't. They're powered by radiation, which is good because some of them work on the dark side of the planet, but if the sky pirates got ahold of them, we'd really be in trouble.

Sky pirates interfere with production plants and try to take the precious metals that the rockets are made of, and space pirates do too. There's always the risk of running into space pirates out there and getting killed or pressed into service. Rockets are fast and sturdy, but not armored. Pirates have grenade launchers and laser cannons. Just one good hit would blast a hole in the side of the ship and kill everyone aboard, so most people just cooperated with the space pirates. I've even seen ads for insurance that covered pirate attacks.

The sky pirates, though, are at a disadvantage. They have to contend with more law enforcement, between the System United and the police on the planets, not to mention that if they attacked and destroyed the vehicle, escape from them was a simple matter of flying away.

The old junker is no match for the robot's speed. The robot cruises right alongside, and a mechanical voice projects from a speaker inside it.

"Land your vehicle and present your identification," says the female voice.

Instead, airtight ports open up in the sides of the ship and laser fire shoots out. The robot rolls and dives, getting char marks on its feet but protecting the engine and pilot. Thea and I duck for cover behind a tower and watch the battle unfold.

The robot's pilot must have called in reinforcements because all of the sudden, two cruiser planes pull up behind the ship and the robot turns to face the junker again with his own laser gun at the ready. It looks like it's all over for the pirates, but they pull into a quick roll like robot had just done, and move out of the way. It tries to dodge around them and pull up, but the cruiser on its left is faster. It whips around and shoots the junker several times, hitting it straight in the engine compartment. But that's not enough to stop it. I hear another engine kick on, and the junker lurches forward. It shoots at the two cruisers closest to it, but misses, and starts a climb into the stratosphere, but it's slow; much too slow. The cruisers and the robot catch up to it easily and aim their lasers at the second engine compartment. They blast it open, leaving a hole and a bunch of black smoke curling behind it. It whines out a death knell before a third engine revs to life.

This is new to me. Junkers only come with two engines, not three. I figure the extra engine must have been added later, but that would take up valuable cargo space. Still, it seems to have been worth it, in this case.

The junker darts ahead for a moment, then slams to a halt. The two cruisers fly right past it and the robot rolls out of the way just before it collides with the motionless ship. The junker starts to fall, and I wonder if the last engine had malfunctioned as it races, nose-down, to the ground where people run for cover, but then the ship pulls out of a spectacular dive, sweeping the branches off the tops of about five trees with an explosion of leaves, and launches itself toward outer space. Its laser doors are shutting again and it's hurtling upward when a whole troop of cruisers appears from both the left and the right. They turn to follow the ship, and with speeds like theirs, I'm sure they'll catch the pirates.

Thea watches beside me, breathless. She probably hasn't seen a sky battle before.

"That was awesome," she says in a voice barely above a whisper.

"Yeah, hopefully they'll get the air machine going again, too. I think that's why the pirates attacked. They saw their chance while nobody can fly."

"Do they do that kind of thing often?"

"Who, the pirates?"

"Yeah."

"Well, kind of...yeah."

"Huh."

"Hey, what about your parents? They know so much about the machine, maybe they've been working on it."

"How are they supposed to get to it? They can't fly."

"Someone can send a jet to pick them up and take them to the machine..."

I hear a rattling noise above my head and I look to see the planes—not just the cruisers, but the travel bubbles and everything—rock and shudder, and sink lower and lower toward the ground. I think they're landing to help get people to safety, until one narrowly misses an oak tree and another skids down the sidewalk. They can't fly. They were built for Skyport's atmosphere. Without the extra lift generated by the machine, their wings can't hold them up.

Then I see something even worse: old technology descending from the sky, as if the planet had flipped over and darkness was overtaking the land. I hear the revving and clunking of rusted metal parts, and the squeak of hatches opening to reveal cannons aimed at the downed jets, the buildings, and Thea and me. Sky pirates.

There must be a hundred of them. How did they know this was going to happen? Maybe they'd planned it. Maybe they're the ones behind the machine malfunctioning. They didn't just take this chance, they made it.

Thea and I duck further behind the tower and peek out from behind it. Eight robots come running up to protect the jets, but their little laser guns have little hope against the cannons of the pirates. Still, they're heavily armored and can get the pilots to safety, at least until the pirates start attacking the buildings. Their ships are massive, and the robots are seriously outnumbered. The sky pirates' vessels are as different from each other as a windstorm is to a flood. Some are boxy transport shuttles retrofitted with heavy plates of armor welded on in a crooked pattern, leaving gaps for extra cannons to stick out. Others are sleek fighter jets scrounged up from scrapyards with mismatching weaponry attached to them. Laser cannons, sonar guns, and more protrude from the ships like decorations on a Christmas tree.

One has antennae sticking out everywhere, and another is vaguely trapezoidal, but in chunks welded together like a blocks superglued together. One beige ship is far wider than it is tall, with barely enough room to stand up straight in, and another has more corners than it knows what to do with.

Rusted, creaky power guzzlers dragged out of a dump somewhere rumble alongside light transporters that hold no more than three people at a time, and buzz nonstop. I count two that hold fifty or more, not that they're that full, but they might be, and although they're not fortified as much as some of the others are, especially the junker from that's come back from beyond the atmosphere, now that the cruisers are down and can't chase it anymore, but the two biggest ones are also some of the highest-powered and fasted ships out there, even if they are old tech. Old tech seems to be the only things that are working right now. Even the robots are stuck on the ground. I see the jets attached to them sputtering and singeing the grass, but the robots aren't the slightest bit above the ground.

Some ships are armored, some not, but most bear the logos of Skyport companies, even if they're no longer visible through the chips in the paint that the pirates had splashed on to cover them.

But they are all old technology, so they all work, unlike the shiny cruisers they're descending on like vultures.

 

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	8. Chapter 8 -- Right as Rain

There is nothing I can do to save those people, but I can't pull myself away.

The pirate ships are close enough for me to see the rust across their sides, and hear them shudder when they start moving toward the occupied cruisers and travel bubbles.

Thea and I duck out of the area. The robots can get the pilots to safety; I'd seen them do that before, but they can't hold out forever. Some of the pirates leave their formation and fly low over the land, looking for targets to attack

"What do we do?" asks Thea.

"I don't know. Maybe we can go to the governor's office. He might know what to do."

The governor of this region has his offices on this cliff because it's the biggest in the area, and is centrally located, so we start running in that direction. Too late, I realize we could have gone back and taken my bike, but as I glance behind me, a crowd of students is flooding out of the building and forming a mob around the school, so I doubt I would have gotten it out of there anyway.

We run past people standing on the ground, some of them for the first time in years. Most of them are flapping their wings, trying to figure out why they're not working anymore. A few children are playing in the grass, but they dart back to their parents when the quake hits.

We never get earthquakes here. Other planets do, besides Earth, of course, where the name comes from. Mars, Venus, and some of our moons here have tectonic shifts and seismic activity, but never the gas giants. Jupiter, Neptune, here? There's no lava coursing underneath us, and we have no plates to move. We're stable, or, at least, I thought we were.

The quake knocks me completely off my feet, partially from the land moving and the other part from shock. I'm terrified, and from the wide-eyes, grimacing looks on their faces, I think everyone else is too. Everyone, that is, except for Thea. She picks herself back up and keeps going, so I do, too. We go around a parent with his children huddled under his wings, and another person on her hands and knees holding onto the grass as if she can stop the shaking by holding the planet still.

We pass by the factories, where all production has ceased. The trains and carts I saw earlier hauling people and metal parts all over the place are sitting there empty, and the buzz of activity is now a dead silence. Even the water vapor that usually funnels out of pipes in the tops of the factories is a trickle of steam winding into the clouds. I see the workers a short distance away from the building. They were likely evacuated in case something bad happened with the machinery, or otherwise, to make sure the factories didn't come down on top of them.

We reach the middle of the cliff and see the building that the governor's office is in. The office was not originally part of the plan for this cliff, so it's underneath a five-story bakery. The governor's office is three stories tall, itself, and underneath that lives a famous retired cartographer. I wonder if he knows about the machine. He probably does. He might have even figured it out himself, if no one told him.

We take the outside steps up to the lowest floor of the governor's office. I'm so glad it isn't raining, or we would probably slip off. We enter through the narrow little door in the side of the building, and go through the white painted waiting room, over the red rug and past plastic chairs, up the inside stairs and right into his office. The corridor for the staircase was tight, but I was used to it. Stairs are afterthoughts around here. But most of the rooms have outward-facing windows. Rarely did I ever see a room with no windows, and when I did it was usually either a closet of a bathroom. This office is no exception.

It's a small office with white walls and abstract pictures of painted colorful nothings above a laminate desk. Two wide and tall windows, each the size of a set of double doors and one of them open, flank the desk. It smells like rainy leaf air freshener and hair cream in here.

The governor, a short, wide, man, stands when he realizes he has guests, but sits down just as quickly when he realizes who exactly his guests are. He holds a thin stack of loose papers in his hands that he does not stop shuffling, even when he's talking.

"We know about the machine," says Thea. "We know it's broken, and we want to help!"

"Machine?" the governor chuckled, a patronizing noise. "That's a myth. There's nothing down there except the core of the planet, which is made of rock."

Another cruiser hits the ground outside the window and we all turn to look. The pilot stumbles out and goes into the nearest building, which happens to be an office supply store.

"Then what's causing that?" I ask the governor.

"Imbalances in the atmosphere. It happens from time to time. Everything will be right as rain soon enough."

"No, it won't. Not if the machine dies."

"There is no machine, and there's nothing we can do about this. We didn't cause it, and we can't fix it. Nothing bad will happen. Everything will be fine."

"There is a machine, I've seen it with my own eyes, and you're seeing the effects of it!"

"There is no machine," says the governor, as cheerfully as if he was taking a walk in the sunshine. "All will be fine. There is no problem."

Disgusted, Thea and I turn around and leave back through the waiting room and out the door, which the governor's aides close behind us. We stand on the stairs outside, halfway up the building, fuming.

"He's not going to help us at all," said Thea. "Now what do we do?"

"Fix it ourselves. He didn't even believe us. No, he  _chooses_  not to believe us. He can come right out here and see for himself if he wants. Or just look out his window. It's right here!"

We make our way down the stairs and my mind is churning to think of an idea. I'm not about to stand aside and let the world crumble. But what can I do?

The cartographer leans out his window as we pass him on the way down. He's an old man with a white beard and a brown hat on his head.

"Gone to see the governor?" he asks us.

"We did, but it didn't help much." Another quake happens and we hold onto the man's window frame to keep from falling off the side of the building.

"Is it about these quakes?" he asks us.

"We think the machine in the middle is causing them," says Thea.

His eyebrows nearly disappear under his hat. "Who told you about that?"

"No one did, we saw it."

"You saw the machine?"

"We both did. We think it's breaking." I nod in agreement.

"I think you're right," says the cartographer.

"Can you talk to the governor? He's not listening to us."

"He doesn't listen to anyone. You might try the president."

"The president of Skyport?"

"Just tell her you know about the machine. That should get her attention. Nobody knows about the machine, or, at least, nobody's supposed to. You're not the first to have discovered it, but..." He leans around and looks behind us.

"I think you're the first wingless ones. What did you do, climb back up?"

"Exactly."

"Hmm," he says. He looks to the side, as if he's studying the paint on the window frame. He draws his eyebrows together and puckers his lips. "I haven't heard of that before. Well, first time for everything." He seems to be lost in his thoughts, but he quickly snaps back out of it. "Yes. See the president about it. Maybe you two can help."

"Thank you, we will."

We get down the stairs before another quake hits. Once we reach the ground, I look up at the cartographer's window and see that it's closed, with him back inside.

"So we're going to see the president," says Thea.

"How are we supposed to get there?" I ask "Neither one of us can fly!"

We hear a rumbling, sighing noise and we turn to look at the nearby bus stop. The old decrepit skybus squeals up to its stop as if it was a normal school day instead of the end of the world.

"Yes we can," says Thea.

"You can't fly this."

"Yes I can. I have my pilot's license."

"What? How? You don't look much older than me."

"Got it on Jupiter. Age restrictions are lower there."

"Are you for real?"

"I actually got it a while ago."

"I'm going to Jupiter."

"We have to get to the president's office first, or we're not going anywhere."

The driver opens the doors of the bus and gets out. He must be on break, and that means the bus must be empty. The doors close behind him and he walks to the coffee stand; one of the few that's on ground level right by the bus stop, targeting the skybus riders for sales. The driver looks almost as old as the ship, and he's wearing his usual white uniform and cap.

We sneak over to the bus while the driver isn't looking. Thea wrenches the doors open and climbs aboard, and I glance back at the driver, who is still standing in line, oblivious to the ship-napping going on behind him. The doors spring shut behind us and Thea takes the front seat behind the steering yoke. I sit down in the seat behind her. Advertisements on the walls of the skybus boast a nice relaxing ride on the Skyport Transit Fleet. The navy blue seats are worn out, and shoved against the burgundy walls, with holes in them that reveal their mustard-colored stuffing. There is no air conditioning on board, and the sun shines orange through the windows and starts to bake us.

Thea pulls a few levers and the creaky old bus cranks up like the old diesel motors people used to drudge around in. "Buckle up." she says.

I do, and we take off. I look out the window at the old man who is still in line for his coffee. He either doesn't know or doesn't care that his ship is getting stolen. Well, it's for a good cause, but I still feel guilty about it.

I can hardly see anything else out of the small window next to me, so I stare out the windshield and hope Thea knows what she's doing.

We speed up a bunch once we leave the bus stop. I didn't know this old ship could go so quickly, but then we speed up even more. We're headed to the dividing line on the planet between day and night, and I've never been there before, which makes me nervous, but not as nervous as I feel right now looking out the window at the once-crowded city.

Everything's empty. There are no travel bubbles honking at each other, no shoppers flying from window to neon-lit window. It would be silent, if not for the rumble of the sky pirates' ships and our own skybus engine. It's a completely different view of this place, and it scares me. It's the creepiest thing I've ever witnessed, like all the TV channels have suddenly turned to static.

We're in a hurry to get to the president's tower, and there isn't any traffic in the way, or anyone to stop us, either, so we hurtle along at breakneck speed, until a rocket falls right in our path.

Thea hits the brake and swerves over it. I can see every pockmark in the metal out the windshield as it passes underneath us. It must have just reentered the atmosphere, because it is red-hot. Maybe it traveling here from another planet and it came in for a landing, not knowing that ships can't fly here anymore, or maybe it just fell out of orbit. No sooner do we clear it than two smaller ships rain down on us.

Thea makes a sharp right, hard enough for the ship to go up on its edge. We pass them and level out again, but an old, abandoned building sways in front of us.

The new tech has better support systems that prevent buildings from coming down, but this one is old, and what little support it did have had worn away over the years. It's a mere skeleton now; its floors showing through gaps in its walls and half of its windows busted out. The frame of the building is the only thing that's left. Even its spire is bent.

The building sways like a strong breeze is hitting it, and like a giant redwood tree at the mercy of a saw, it topples, slowly at first, and then faster and faster. There's no space to turn around, and we're going too fast to stop. I squeeze my eyes shut and brace for impact, digging my fingernails into the seat cushion and tensing every muscle I have, but Thea launches us into a dive that throws my head back against the headrest and pushes my stomach and everything near it up into my ribcage.

We're racing the building to the ground, and there's no air machine below us to stop us from crashing. Little by little, we gain on it, and the ground is getting bigger and bigger, and the sky is a faint halo in the edges of the windshield, and mere meters from the ground she shoots under the building and out the other side. The building crashes into the dirt behind us with a roar, and raises up a cloud of dust around it that would rival a shuttle launch for size.

I wrench my hands off the sides of the seat, but they stay in the same "claw" position, and shake like the rest of me does. I have no idea how fast my heart is beating, but I think it's setting a record for speed. And I'm certain that the skybus just broke its own speed record. I'm surprised it's still in one piece.

"Did you learn to do that on Jupiter?" My voice trembles when I ask, but everything down to my toes is trembling, too.

"Yes."

"Remind me never to go there."

"I thought you wanted your pilot's license."

"I do, but maybe from somewhere calmer."

More buildings topple not far from where we are, but as far as I know, they're abandoned too. They probably needed to come down a long time ago, but not directly in front of where we're flying. The foundations of the newer buildings are set deep into the cliffs, and have counterweights and flexible joints that prevent them from coming apart, which are being put to good use right now. The entire grid of buildings is shaking under us, and swaying back and forth, but nothing else comes down yet. If the quakes get much worse, I think everything is going to fall.

We fly past the edge of the cliff and out over the expanse, where we finally get the chance to catch our breaths.

"Who do you think is causing this, the sky pirates? They were the first ones to get here when the core started failing. It seems a little suspicious. Almost like they were waiting."

"I really think they just saw their opportunity and took it. Maybe they have sensors on board that tells them things like that. Air pressure and strength, I mean, especially if it's older technology. No, I don't think it's the pirates. I think it might be a conspiracy."

"What are you talking about?"

"It just seems like this is the type of thing that would be a conspiracy. That's all."

"I still think it's sky pirates," I say. "Or space pirates."

"Maybe, but I thought they were mostly concerned with Jupiter and Saturn and places like that."

"Well, no, not exactly," I say. "Sometimes they target specific shipments to steal, or people to hold for ransom, but I don't know why they'd attack the core of the Skyport. I just can't figure out what their motive is."

"Motive? They're space pirates, they don't need a motive. They just do piratey things like attack the cores of planets to make the people on them give them money."

"Have they asked for money?" I ask.

"Well, they wouldn't ask us, they'd ask the president."

"I guess we'll find out if they have or not when we tell the president."

"Yeah, but I'm sure she already knows what's going on."

"Yeah, well, maybe we can help anyway."

"How?" asks Thea.

"Ah- we'll figure that out when we get there."

Thea lifts her head up sharply. "Do you hear that?"

"What?"

"A rumbling noise."

"I only hear the skybus."

Something rises up behind us: I can see it in the windshield, but I don't know what it is, only that it's large. There aren't any rearview mirrors on the bus, so Thea and I turn around to look.

Directly behind us, a sky pirate ship has its cannons aimed at us.

 

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	9. North Is Where the Sun Is

Thea and I scream, and she pulls the ship into a roll. I see something pulse red in the ship's open hatch, right behind the cannon, and a laser shoots just to the right of us. The laser is so hot, that even though it misses, it still scorches the bus, so the right side of it is red-hot. I can feel the heat burning through the metal and two layers of seats, which I hope are fireproof.

Thea flies us around the towers and careens around corners, trying to lose the pirates. I get a good look at their slower vessel as they come around a corner after us. It's a rectangular box, three times the size of our bus, with cannons lined up on both sides of it.

The ship launches a laser blast that shatters the corner of a tower right above us, and we swerve around the debris. Metal shards rain on the windows and roof of the bus as the pirates shoot another pulse. This one hits an animated billboard with a cartoon cat on it and blows a hole clean through it.

People lean out of their windows to look as we race by. A couple of kids wave at us, and at least one old lady with curly white hair snatches her flowery curtain shut. The ship keeps following us, and Thea starts doing evasive maneuvers.

We dive down so close to the ground I could touch it if the floorboard wasn't there. Trees seem to pop up in front of us, and Thea dodges them left and right, coming so close the leaves on them shake, and then she pulls up over an electrical tower and launches the bus forward as fast as it can go.

The pirates continue shooting at us, but Thea whirls us around so violently, there's no hope for the pirates to hit their target. We go sideways between two close-set towers and turn left and go between two more, and by that time, either their ship is too big to fit, or the pirates are tired of following us, because we don't see them anymore.

We slow down to nearly a stop, and Thea looks around. Once she's satisfied that we've lost the pirates, I'm expecting her to turn back toward the middle of the planet so we can get to the president's tower, but instead, she frowns at the instrument panel as if it had insulted her.

"What is it?" I ask.

"Got turned around during the chase. Do you know how to get there from here?"

"No, I've never been out here. I mostly stay around my cliff and school's."

"Don't suppose this thing has a GPS?"

"I doubt it. It flies in the same circle all the time."

Thea takes the pink bracelet off her wrist and twists it apart, and then unfolds it into a panel. "I just updated this two days ago. It should have Skyport on it... Aha."

She turns the ship around and heads south, taking care to ease around corners in case the pirates were still there. I catch a glimpse of the panel that used to be her bracelet, and I see lines scraggling across the screen and an arrow pointing straight ahead. It's a compass. We have no real need for them here in our daily lives, just getting from place to place, but Thea probably doesn't know that. Things must be different on Jupiter.

"North is where the sun is," I tell Thea.

"What?"

"The sun points north. All the time."

"That makes no sense whatsoever."

"I didn't come up with it."

"That must have something to do with the machine. Maybe it turns the cliffs."

"I was always taught that the cliffs were carved by the founders with lasers and towed into place."

"Yes, but how do they stay there? This planet turns like any other one does. Only difference is this one goes sideways. I think you were only given half the story. The machine moves the cliffs around so the same side is always facing the sun."

"You think so? Why would they do that?"

"I have no idea, but do you have a better explanation?"

"No. The machine keeps the people flying, the cliffs floating and turning, and it probably does a lot of other things we don't even realize. So if someone doesn't do something..."

"Skyport is definitely going to fall."

I tried to imagine it: The cliffs shuddering, then falling just like the cruisers and the zeppelin did, leaning over and tumbling into each other, and sinking into the planet.

The towers and apartments would crumble, and the ground would crack open and swallow any vehicles, factories in its way. The people standing on top of it would flap their wings in vain all the way down as they clawed at the air that used to hold them, but now has let them fall. The thought was like a punch to the gut.

"No matter what," I tell Thea, "even if the president's people aren't doing anything about it, no matter what, we have to at least try to help. We have to."

"Of course."

I can see the cliff where most of the government buildings are located. It's mostly white and gray buildings, but there's something between us and the cliff. A zeppelin floats along; the only thing in the air besides us and the pirates, and that's probably because the gas inside it is so light, it would float with or without the air core pushing it.

I see zeppelins around sometimes, mostly around the edges of the cities, because that's where their docks are located. This one is the color of a ripe peach with their company logo on it, and a sealed metal basket of the same shade hangs beneath it, covered with windows. I can see the metal skeleton of the balloon under its rubbery skin. It must be a cruise line from the dark side. Rich people go over there to see the stars and meteor showers and stuff, nothing I'm interested in. I hear the food is great on those things, though.

I figure it's still floating because it's filled with gas, but as I watch, it sinks lower and lower until it brushes the tops of the buildings, and catches itself on spires and sharp corners. The canvas shreds, and some of the metal spires are knocked loose, but not before they damage the zeppelin beyond repair. They tear a gash down the length of the vessel, and as it empties itself of air like its dying breath, the basket swings beneath it. I feel sick.

I think the balloon is filled with a mixture of helium and another type of gas, along with a stabilizer of some kind, to prevent it from catching on fire. It collapses in on itself rapidly, and I hear the metal rails on its inside creak and squeal and roar as they bend and twist under the weight. The metal structure of the balloon wedges it in place between the buildings, so, it looks to me like the zeppelin won't fall any farther, at least, not immediately. And that's probably not even the worst part of the damage. Its structure has probably collapsed inside. They're going to have to scrap it and make a new one; there will be no refurbishing this one. The people in the basket be safe as long as they stayed inside.

"You don't think...they died...?" asks Thea. She's slowed the bus to a crawl. "Maybe we can help. They can get on the bus."

"No, I didn't see anyone fall out, and the basket itself didn't hit anything, just the balloon. Look, they're looking out the windows. Bet it's a mess in there."

The people inside the basket open the windows and look down below them, but I guess they see everyone on the ground and no one in the air, because they stay put and don't try to fly out. Good. They're safe where they are.

The radio flicks on and static comes out of it.

"What now?" says Thea. "The bus isn't broken, too, is it?"

Through the static, the president's voice rings through, and the static fades away.

"This is President Sumati. People of Skyport 7, this is President Sumati in a worldwide broadcast. We are aware of the quakes-"

"You should be, they're probably happening over there, too," says Thea.

"And help is coming."

"As soon as the planes get off the ground."

"Rest assured, that if you are in need, rescue is on the way," says the president. "These quakes will soon pass, and all will return to normal. We will survive this, we will rebuild what has fallen, and we will emerge stronger than ever before.

"Help is on the way for anyone who needs it." She reads out locations of shelters on each cliff, starting with the ones farthest away from her tower, and then repeats them twice more. Not that the shelters will help people much when the planet is imploding. They'd have better luck trying a rocket factory. As a matter of fact, I'm starting to wonder why Thea and I don't do the same thing.

"Surely she knows it's the machine that's doing it," says Thea. "She has to, she's just not allowed to tell people for some reason. I don't know if the governor was told not to say anything, or if he really believes that there's no machine and nothing is wrong, but the  _president_... "

"Do  _we_  know it's the machine?"

"Yes, when I went down to the canyon and got ready to jump, the air was much, much weaker than it was yesterday. It hardly even ruffled my hair. She has to know. They're probably going to fix the machine right now."

"If they are, there's no reason for us to go. But if they aren't..." If they aren't even going to try to fix the machine, my home is gone. My friends, my family, my neighbors my classmates: everything I have here will be gone.

"We're going anyway, right?" I ask. "Just in case."

"Sure. I'd hate to turn around and fly back through that mess."

It'll still be another twenty minutes before we reach the president's tower, and the sky is getting darker. This is a very strange sight to me. I've never, not once in my life, experienced nighttime. Or morning or evening, for that matter. My entire life has been illuminated by the sun, except when I drew the blackout curtains to sleep. From the time I wake up to the time I get home from school to the time I go to bed, the sun is in the same position in the sky, and it never gets any lighter or darker unless it's raining or a solar eclipse is happening. The sky going dark like this is messing with my head. It's like there's something wrong with my glasses, or like I'm wearing sunglasses that I can't take off, or like it's going to rain, but the clouds just keep piling up and block out the sun. It's kind of creepy and I wonder if Thea can see out the windshield okay.

She checks dials and gauges in between scanning the radio and the horizon, and our talk turns to her parents, and what they might be doing with the machine.

"My family just moved here a month ago," she says.

"If you've been here for a month, why are you just now starting school?"

"My parents wanted me to have time to settle in. This place is so different from where I'm from." She looks through the windshield. Maybe she's remembering our classmates flying around up there. That must take some getting used to.

As far as I know, Skyport's the only planet that has winged people. Except, of course, for people who were born on Skyport and then moved away. I'm not counting them. Other planets have differences that people adapt to, sure, but by using equipment like sand masks and flippers, not by changing their bodies. As a matter of fact, there's a council just for discussing if government-mandated body modification is ethical, and so far the answer is a "NO!" so loud you can hear it over the rain on Venus. But modification isn't illegal, either, and there's a whole different conversation over whether or not it should be forced on children, even if their parents or other people think it's "traditional" or "for their own good". So we don't have to get it, but most people here do anyway. It's not painful because wings develop like the rest of the body does in the womb. It's the same as if they were born with an additional finger on each hand, except wings are much larger than fingers and grow out of one's back. Babies are born with tiny little wings stuck tight against their backs so they don't catch on anything during birth. As the baby grows, you'll sometimes see them sucking on their wingtip like they would their thumb, and if they're frightened or cold, they'll wrap themselves up in their wings like a blanket or cocoon. The wings grow until the person is about twenty-something years old, getting longer as the person gets taller. Eventually, they stop growing.

The skin on people's wings wrinkles in the elderly the same as anywhere else on their bodies do, but it's not their wings that keep them from flying in old age; it's the muscles that weaken. That can be dangerous, so most of them take the skybus.

"No one has wings on Jupiter," Thea says, "and they don't need them here, either. I'm fine just the way I am. And if I become a parent here, I won't do that to my child, either."

That seems odd to me. My neighbor, Mrs. Hobbes, was from Neptune, and she didn't have wings either. That I could understand, but purposefully not giving your child wings? That seems cruel to me.

"There's no reason to change people. Especially without their consent."

"Maybe. But why did your parents want to come here?"

"I was told it was for a job opportunity, but I think they're hiding."

"Hiding? From what?"

"Not what, who. They were working for the government. Top secret stuff."

"What top-secret stuff?"

"They're not going to  _tell_  me!"

"I highly doubt that's what's going on."

"Why?"

"If they wanted to blend in, they'd've moved somewhere else."

"I don't think my parents have ever blended in in their lives..."

"So you think they have something to do with the air core?"

"Yeah, they specialized in air technology back home, First it was the gas recycling system. Then it was the molecular center for gas filtering. And then it wasn't long before they started researching Skyport; making trips here and everything. And then they got a job with the government and decided to move. When my parents came here, I decided to go with them, so we packed our bags, got on a rocket, and set off for Skyport."

"Wait, so you could have stayed on Jupiter by yourself?"

"Yeah."

"Alone?"

Thea gives me a weird look, like I should know the answer already. "Yeah. Happens all the time. I didn't want to though. I was suffocating." She raises her hand to her throat in a strangling gesture and sticks her tongue out.

"But Jupiter's enormous! It has the most people, and the most space, and the most things to do. And you think you can breathe better on Skyport?"

"You know those clear ovals you see connected to each other over the planet? In pictures and stuff?"

"Yeah." I'd seen them. Like a spider web wrapping around Jupiter, cocooning it in a livable shell, it covered the entire planet in a haze. If Jupiter wasn't a gas giant, it could be mistaken for covering its surface, but Jupiter doesn't exactly  _have_  a surface. As far as I know, the compartments float in an orbit around the planet close enough that the gravity keeps them nearby, but far enough away that they don't tumble into the planet. I envy the people over there. It's a metropolis. "What about them?" I ask.

"We never leave those domes."

"Never?"

"Never. It's too dangerous. There's no oxygen out there, and no air core. We're always doing drills on what to do if the dome we're in breaks or if we fall out. Like: 'hold on to the nearest handrail and wait for a security worker to rescue you' and 'don't swing or throw heavy objects around inside the domes or you will most certainly die' and 'check three times for safety before opening a door to make sure it doesn't lead  _outside_ ' and stuff like that. If we escape the dome, we just fall down inside the planet and inhale methane, or if we're really unlucky, we'll drop into the big storm in the middle of the planet and die from being shaken around. This place is so much better. There aren't any walls."

"There are. They're just made of air."

The president's tower is halfway between the sunlit side and the dark side. A bunch of people take the tower placement symbolically, but I see it as a matter of practicality. It's in the middle and has easy access to both sides of the planet. And it's pretty. Eternal sunset, or sunrise, depending on how you look at it.

The sky gets darker and darker the farther south we go, until it's all orange and purple like I've seen in pictures. The sun lights up the sky in a crimson blaze and the sides of the buildings reflect its glow. The clouds glow, too, especially around their edges, but their topsides look burnt where the sunlight doesn't get through. It's beautiful, like there should be music playing, but all I hear is the bus's steady rumble.

It also kind of looks like the apocalypse to me. If I hadn't heard about the sun setting in other places, and seen footage of it, I would probably think that the world really had ended and no president or air machine could do anything about it, and we should turn around right now and board the next rocket to Mercury because staying here is hopeless.

The sun never sets on my side of the planet. It doesn't even move around, so the sky never darkens. We see the moons sometimes, like white slivers in a blue bowl, but here, they shine like they're competing with the sun. And there, as far into the darkness as I can see, light shines through like someone had poked holes, tiny ones, in the dark swirling blanket over our heads. They hover in the air like they have wings of their own, and shimmer in regions far beyond our atmosphere. Stars.

"Wow," I breathe.

"Yeah, sunset's pretty."

"And the stars."

She laughs. "Stars? Oh, those stars. I missed them at first, they're so faint. Yeah, you've never seen those before, have you?"

"Never."

"It's all I ever saw at home. On Jupiter, I mean. The domes orbit the planet, so that's what's over our heads all the time, besides the occasional shuttle or asteroid. What do you think about them?"

"They're amazing."

"I think your blue sky is pretty amazing, too."

I'm definitely going to this side of the planet sometime soon. Maybe it won't be on a cruise, or a skybus, but I'm coming back here, and going even farther south than this. And soon. Now that I've experienced it, I can't imagine going the rest of my life without another sunset. And the stars. I only see the faint ones where the sky is dark enough, but someday I'm going to go to side of the planet where it's so dark they fill up the sky. I've seen it in pictures, and now I want to see it in real life.

The tower is just ahead of us, and I can see from here its tall triangular shape and the guards hovering outside the windows. They're dressed in gray, but they're too far away to see any more details than that. I look down at the ground floor of the tower and I'm surprised to find that there aren't any guards there. Either they assume people would try to come through the windows, or they're short-staffed because they're busy helping people with the quakes and everything.

We're landing now, pretty close to the tower, but closer to the other government buildings—the courthouse, the law library—which are significantly shorter than the tower. Thea sets the skybus down on the grass as if we've landed on a pillow; an amazing feat given that the quakes are worse than ever.

Tremors run through my body with every step I take on the floorboard of the bus, while I squeeze through the doors, and when I set foot on the ground. The tower is massive, but more symmetrical than the skyscrapers back home, and it has an aerodynamic feel: the doors and windows are curves, not rectangular, and the path leading up to it is a slope, not stairs. There are trees around it trimmed to look like waves, and I wonder why the effort was put in because no one ever saw them since they were on the ground. People probably see the fountain out front, though; it's pretty tall, and shoots water high into the air. Everyone flying over it would have to watch out or they'd get wet.

We walk quickly to the building. I ache to run, since time is running out, but I don't want to catch the attention of the guards, who are flying above our heads. They've probably already seen us, and deemed us not a threat, but I don't want to change their minds.

Thea and I walk up the slope to the tower door, which is glass and metal in sharp, textured triangular designs, and go inside.

We enter into a wide entrance hall with red, blue, and gold tile mosaics and polished plaques on the walls. If it's this nice on the lower levels, where no one sees, I wonder what the rest of it looks like. We walk through the next door and enter an empty waiting room with red chairs, a desk at the back, and another one of those abstract paintings on the wall, and the next room is nearly identical except the rug and chairs are different colors, and the painting is a landscape on Venus. Our pace quickens as we go through the rooms, and I wonder if we'll ever reach a staircase. Then, wonder of wonders, I see a sign marked "elevator" in front of a reflective set of double-doors.

Wow. I've only ever heard about these. I've never seen a real elevator before. Not in person, at least. Thea is looking at it, too.

"Should we take it?" she asks.

"I'm afraid to get stuck in it if the power goes out during a quake, or if the building falls over and we're inside."

"Yeah, okay."

I give it a forlorn look, and mentally promise to come back to it someday, if it's still standing.

We head for the staircase and start climbing. A few people run down the other way and we duck under their wings, but no one tries to stop us. I guess they're all too worried about evacuating. Cement stairs echo under our feet and we pull ourselves up with the white banisters. It's surprisingly well lit in here. These stairs must be attached to the outside because there are windows. They're small windows barely big enough to stick my whole hand through, but they're windows nonetheless. It makes me think that this staircase was not an afterthought. Like it was designed along with the rest of the building.

Then it occurs to me that this place must have been built before the gene therapy started. The architects were wingless, so of course they build stairs and elevators. How else were they going to get to the top floors?

We reach the top floor to find a hallway cleared of all people. Only papers are scattered on the ground, and a half-finished bottle of water lies on a desk next to a basket of little pink flowers.

They must be really old fashioned here, to be using paper instead of tablets. I guess for some things, paper copies might be important, but I've never run across a real example of that in my life.

Yellow wallpaper covers the walls in a twisty column pattern, and antique furniture rests at the base of it. A series of expensive rugs are on the floor beneath our feet stretching all the way down the hall.

We go as fast as we can, but after climbing those stairs, I'm in bad shape, and Thea must be feeling worse, seeing as she's not used to climbing that much.

Two guards, one male and one female, stand outside what I imagine must be the president's door. They're both wearing nametags: the lady's says Juniper, and the man's says Jammeh.

Thea goes up to one of them, the lady, and tries to talk her into letting us in.

"We need to see the president," she says.

"Ms. Sumati cannot see you without an appointment. You can make an appointment by-" A quake cuts her words off as she struggles to keep her balance.

"It's about the machine in the middle of the planet," says Thea. "We want to help fix it."

"There is no machine in the planet. Go home." Juniper's eyes flick upward to the chandelier swaying in the hallway. "Safely," she adds.

"Yes there is, and it's broken."

"There is no machine in the planet," Juniper says again. "Go home."

"We've seen it and we know it's broken. Does the president know that's what's causing the quakes? If she sends someone down there to fix it, it might not be too late, but if she waits, it will be."

"Listen, kid. I don't know what dream you had that you went to the center of the planet and saw a machine, but I'm telling you, there's nothing down there. No machine, broken or otherwise, is causing these quakes. Go home and stop worrying about it. There's nothing we can do to fix it."

"Do you and the governor back home really not know about it, or were you told to keep it a secret?"

"Go home."

The ground quakes again, and the tremor runs all the way up to the top floor and knocks the guards off balance, but Thea takes the chance to dart through the door behind them. I follow, and the guards reach out to snatch me by the back of my shirt, but I duck and they miss.

Most of the rooms in Skyport are outward-facing and have windows; sometimes multiple windows per room. Rarely did I ever see an inner room. But the room I'm in has no openings other than the one Thea and I just ran through. It's vast and triangular, like the tower itself, and the walls tighten together the higher up they go, up to a claustrophobic red point of a ceiling. The walls are painted in wide vertical stripes alternating between red and gray, and a small black sphere of a machine sits on a table against the far wall. It's outfitted with nozzles, shoots, and all kinds of metal bits sticking out. I have no idea what it is but it looks intimidating and scientific.

Despite the presence of a black desk against the right side wall, I don't think it looks anything like an office building. The rest of the room is decorated in shades of red, gray, and black, with one obsidian table in the center of it all.

Six people stand hunched over two holograms; one on each end of the table in the middle of the room, and the group is deep in discussion. One of the holograms spinning around above the table shows Skyport, and the other one is a detailed copy of the black metal sphere against the wall. Five of the people: two women and three men, all of them pretty young, but not as young as Thea and me, are dressed entirely in black, with all kinds of gear strapped around their shoulders and on belts around their waists. The sixth person is wearing a floor-length dark green dress and carries no gear. Her long black hair is braided, and she's wearing a gray wrap, almost like a robe, but more modern and shiny. Even from the back, I recognize her instantly. I'm looking at the president of Skyport 7.

 

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	10. Do We Still Jump?

I thought we were going to speak to a representative or something; I never expected to run into the actual president. She's facing away from us, listening as the people in black talk and point out bits of the hologram. Her wings are folded behind her, but raised slightly, and tense. I can see the muscles in them tighten. She's stressed. I would feel the same way if I was in charge during something like this.

The people in black bolt upright with their hands in the side compartments of their belts when they hear the guards shouting at us, and then President Sumati looks up and turns around. Her face is drawn and worried. The guards grab Thea and me by our shoulders, but they don't cover our mouths, so we start shouting.

"We know about the machine in the center, and we want to help!"

Her eyes narrow and her brow furrows. "How did you hear about the machine?"

"We saw it," says Thea.

"How?"

"We jumped down there."

"You did what?"

"We know it's broken, and we want to help!"

"You should not have jumped. That was a very dangerous thing to do. And what can two wingless children do about it? We have a team here already."

"Why is the machine a secret?" I ask. President Sumati waves at the people in black to keep working, and as they huddle over the table again, she steps closer to us, and the guards go back to the door.

"To prevent anything from happening to it. It is difficult to attack something that you don't know about, and breaking the machine would devastate our planet. This, however, was not an attack."

"It wasn't?"

"No. You probably expected the pirates to be behind it, but they have no knowledge of the core. We've been expecting the machine to fail for some time now, as it was built so long ago. The founders designed it as well as they could, and logically for the time, but that era has passed. The machine needs replacing soon, and we are in the process of doing that, but unfortunately, we have not finished building it yet. For now, we must repair the machine that we have.

If we don't, the planet will destabilize and the cliffs will fall out of their positions, and the machine will stop rotating the cliffs so that the planet is always locked on its coordinates."

"How does that work?" I ask.

"The sun is its guide. There are solar panels on it that detect the light. The machine used to be even more powerful, and it served another function as well."

It used to be more powerful? I imagine a super-powered perpetual bathroom hand dryer, or a leaf blower you'd use if you wanted to clear the leaves off the whole map, including the ones still attached to trees. So it's not a conspiracy, and it's not pirates. The machine just needs repairs. I'm relieved that the president is doing something to help matters instead of ignoring them or pretending that they don't exist. Even if we can't fix the machine; even if it's beyond repair, we should at least try.

"What other function did it serve?"

"When Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Pluto were being colonized, the machine supplied them with atmosphere from Skyport. It only dissipated on Mercury until we found a way to form it into pellets that off-gas over time, which are still used today.

"We knew that the machine would break sometime, but we did not know when. We've been maintaining it, and we had hoped that it would last long enough for us to finish the replacement." She indicates the black sphere behind her. It doesn't look powerful enough to hold itself up, much less a planet from the inside out. If technology has really progressed this much, I'm impressed.

"But it didn't last. We have to fix it."

"So go fix it now," says Thea.

"We don't know what the problem is, yet," says President Sumati. We're running diagnostics. That's what's taking so long. If we go down there with the wrong tools or replacement parts, it would be a waste of time—we'd have to come back up here, get the correct parts..."

"We got it!" shouts a man from the table. He jabs his gloved finger at the hologram, which now shows the current air core machine: a wild beast of a contraption, with switches, chutes, and vents pockmarking its surface, and wires running over it like snakes. I have a better idea of what it looks like now, even though the hologram is small and I'm not very close to it. It's not quite a perfect sphere: it's lopsided in places, but according to the measurements running alongside it, it's absolutely massive. Top to bottom, it's at least ten skyscrapers tall, and across it looks more like eleven. And not the baby skyscrapers, either—the high-powered executive ones. The machine is mind-bogglingly big. How could the little sphere on the table compete with it?

"It's a disconnection in four thirty six. We'll get the part and send it over."

"Send it to the machine?" Thea asks Ms. Sumati.

"No, we will give it to our people nearby who have transport that still works, and can take them down to the core. We believe that this piece worked its way loose and blew away. They can replace it."

"What piece?" I ask.

The president strides back to the table and picks up something shiny.

"Are we ready for transport?" she asks the man next to her.

"Negative, ma'am. Standby."

She brings the shiny thing over to us and lets us see it. It's a little metal spiral about a centimeter long and half as wide.

"This one, we think. We're bringing a lot of extra parts just in case we're wrong."

"A bolt?" I ask. "The world is ending over a bolt? You can pick that up at the hardware store."

"This is a priceless handcrafted piece made to exact specifications that will fail if not rendered exactly as designed."

I cross my arms at that. "It's a bolt," I mutter.

"Are we ready for transport now?" the president calls over her shoulder.

"Negative, ma'am, standby."

"What's wrong?"

"We are determining the fastest way to get the part to our operatives. It must be land-based, as none of our air transport works; as well as stealthy." She runs a hand over her forehead and her wings involuntarily draw closer together. I think she's even more stressed out now than she was earlier.

"Joan, do we have  _any_  vehicles that go over land?" she asks.

"Not working, no, ma'am. The only one we have is in the shop. Its engine went a while ago."

"That still isn't fixed?"

"Not yet, ma'am. We didn't think we'd need it so it wasn't listed as a priority..."

"We have a skybus. It still works."

"That is not stealthy enough."

If something isn't done soon, the planet will collapse. We don't have time to stand around like this.

"Do you have a bike?" I ask Ms. Sumati.

"Y-yes, there is an old antique motorbike parked out back. It was a donation from the historical foundation. Why?"

"I'll take the bike to deliver the part."

"I cannot allow you to do that. It is too dangerous. The quakes and the pirates will kill you, and that motorbike is so old it will probably break down before you're even halfway there. You will stay here and let us take care of it."

The ground shakes and I can feel the building sway. "We're no safer here than we are out there! We'll both go. I'll take the bike, you guys walk or something. Whoever gets there first will give your people the part."

The shaking grows stronger and I know the machine won't hold out much longer. It's faltering and it can't hold the cliffs. Soon they'll crash into each other and destroy everything. All of the buildings will be twisted sheets of metal. And the people? They'll have nowhere to escape to unless they get on a rocket headed away from here.

President Sumati puts a hand to her forehead and scowls at the floor. It's the same face my parents make when they look at the electric bill. She doesn't like the position she's in. She's most likely weighing the pros and cons of sending two wingless kids out to save the world, and I guess she thinks it's a good plan, or, at least, that it's worth a try.

"Go, then," she says, and hands a bolt to Thea, and another one to me, probably in case something happened to one of them. They're so small, they could easily be lost. I slip it into my pocket.

"Thank you," we say.

"Nico, take them to the motorbike, please."

"Yes, ma'am," says a thin man with dark hair.

"Good luck to you," Ms. Sumati says to us as Nico herds us out the door.

"Take it to Skyport 6," says Nico, as we head down the hallway to the stairs. I guess we're still not taking the elevator. At least it'll be easier going downstairs this time instead of up.

"But there  _is_  no Skyport 6," says Thea, looking confused.

"Yes there is. There are also Skyports five, four, three, two, and one, and one little base we nicknamed one and a half. Six is on the cliff adjoining ours. It will take about ten minutes to get there, assuming you don't run into any trouble."

Ten minutes? I don't know why they're all so worried. How much trouble could I possibly get into in ten minutes?

We reach the lowest floor and turn away from the entrance, and instead go out the back door. A black motorbike is parked under a canvas awning just outside the building. It's bigger than my bicycle, and it's jet black and shines like it's just been polished. There's no time to admire it, though.

Nico hands us both protective gear; a thick jacket and pants, which we put on, and shoves a black helmet with a faceplate into my hands, which I also put on. I need one of these for my bike back home. The faceplate is black on the outside, but as clear as day on the inside, and so light weight it feels like I'm not wearing it at all. Thea gets a helmet, too, and when I get on the bike, Thea gets on behind me and holds onto my waist. Nico gives us directions to the meet-up place.

"Skyport 6 is in a bunker on the cliff next to ours. There's a small gap in between this cliff and that one that you're going to have to jump."

"What?"

"Don't worry. It's little."

I start the bike's engine and I feel, rather than hear, it hum. We take off down the road, and I hunch down over the bike trying to decrease air resistance so we go faster, and it glides along as smooth as glass. This part of the path is actually maintained pretty well, at least around the president's tower, but once we leave the middle of the cliff, the road starts to get rough, mostly because of debris. I dodge around downed planes and people still struggling to fly.

We make a sharp drop down a hill and Thea tightens her grip around my waist. The grass and buildings beside us pass by in a blur, but my focus is up ahead. We whip around potholes and power stands, and I'm wondering if the people in the bunker are expecting us, or if we'll be arrested for trespassing. I'm also wondering exactly how big this gap is between us and the next cliff.

It's a much faster ride than I'm used to, but there are fewer potholes over here than there are near my house, despite the rubble and metal bits littering the sidewalk. Thea holds on tight behind me, and it's a good thing she does, because if she falls off at these speeds she might get hurt.

I have to fight the urge to feel in my pocket for the bolt just in case it might have slipped out, but I keep my hands on the handlebars. If we don't get there in one piece, it won't matter if we have the part or not. Besides that, Thea has a duplicate.

More rubble, this time with household things like dishes and tablets in it, fall from the apartments above with every new quake. They're happening more frequently now, and I think they're getting stronger. If the air core can cause this much destruction with one tiny missing piece, I hope they get the replacement machine in there soon. Maybe the new one has a fail-safe that won't trigger an apocalypse from a missing bolt.

The ground is littered with debris, not just from the sky, but also from the trees. Branches dot the path and beyond it, and some of the trees have fallen over, and soil drips off of their exposed roots.

The bike goes over potholes like they aren't even there. As fast as we're going, I can't avoid hitting them, but the way the bike handles is fluid. It seems to know exactly what to do. I can't imagine what the shocks are made of, but they work beautifully.

Behind us, ships converge on the president's tower. I glance over my shoulder and realize that they're pirates. I can't go any faster than we're going right now, but I make sure I don't hit anything. We can't afford to waste time by falling and having to get up, get back on the bike, and start moving again.

Above our heads, a pirate ship flies by. At first, I don't think it sees us, but then it leans sideways and circles back around to face us. I see the hatches open up and metal cannons slide out. There's no one else around, so they must be aiming at us.

Red flashes that look like the sun has crashed into the planet erupt next to us and I dodge around them. It's a good thing we're wearing protective gear, or we'd both be charred.

I swerve left and right around the blasts as we approach the edge of the cliff. I can see the next one over; it's tiny compared to the one we just crossed, but there's a problem.

"This is not a small gap," I say. Maybe it used to be, but if it was, then the quakes drove the cliffs further apart.

"What do we do? Do we still jump?"

I look up at the ship above our heads, and I think about the bolt in my pocket, and about what will happen if we don't make it in time. "Yes, and pray."

There's no bridge across the gap because we're expected to fly across. Well, that's exactly what we're going to do today. I speed up, and Thea digs her fingernails into my shirt. We get to the edge, and jump.

 

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	11. It's Not That I Don't Like Those Odds...

The back wheel leaves the ground and we’re suspended in the air, but this time, if we fall, the part will fall with us, and the machine will shut down, and we and everyone else will be gone for good.

We get closer and closer to the cliff, and the bike growls and Thea holds onto my waist as tightly as I clench the handlebars. The back wheel touches the ground on the other cliff, and then front wheel does, too. We made it!

 The bike bounces a few times, and we head off-road toward the bunker, into a strand of woods where the pirates can’t see us. The cliff we landed on is no more than a five-minute walk across. I can see the other side of it clearly from where we are.  There's a miniature forest on it surrounded by wild grass and weeds, which smack the tires and hit our shoes as we drive through it. I head towards the middle and slightly to the left, where I was told there would be a clearing. When we reach it, a square of grass the size of my school’s gym floor opens up in the middle of the clearing like a trapdoor.

 It’s a hanger, which we rapidly approach. Apparently, the people inside recognize the motorbike or the emblems on our helmets, or else the people back at the president’s tower must have let them know that we were on the way. Either way, we ride down the ramp, out of the sunset and into the artificial lighting of a giant underground concrete building. We come to a stop and the trapdoor lowers again, sealing us in. A new group of people dressed in black jog over to us, and Thea takes the part out of her pocket and hands it over.

“Great, perfect.” says the man she gives it to. He’s a heavyset man with a thick black beard, and he’s dressed in the same black jumpsuit with a utility belt that everybody else is wearing. He seems older than the others, though. I take off my helmet and hang it on one handlebar, and Thea puts hers on the other.

We both get off of the motorbike and walk around to get a better look at the inside of the bunker. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me to see _real_ behind-the-scenes, top-secret stuff. There are yellow railings around the perimeter of the room, but there’s space between it and the wall beyond it. If I went up to the railing and tried to touch the wall, it would be just beyond my reach. Everywhere, people are climbing, jogging, and walking around the floor and in and out of doors, but their movements and scowling faces have a sense of urgency about them.

Thea and I don't go too deep inside the bunker before we reach a ship. As my eyes adjust to the dim, industrial-lit concrete room, more and more details appear.

It's triangular in shape and bulkier than what I'm used to seeing. Its windshield and windows are black so I can't see through it, and its wings are longer than the ones on the new tech, but the whole thing looks sturdy, like it can take on a laser or two. I don't think it’s going to hover very well: it doesn't seem to have the parts to do that, but it looks like it's built for speed. It's old tech—I can tell from the type of jets sticking out of it—but it's sparkling clean as if it's brand new, and I know for certain that it can fly, and fly well.

People in the same black uniforms climb and fly around the ship. I see three people talking into radios; one of them, a heavyset man with a dark beard, and he holds the bolt in his hand between his finger and thumb. I'm afraid he's going to drop it.

 I keep hoping they’ll forget about the motorbike, or at least let me ride it some more before they take it away, but a tall man comes by and wheels it into a hallway, where it disappears. I step over to one side, where there's a handrail and a little ledge to stand on. The ledge is probably there so that tools and parts and things don’t roll away, because when I look down, it's like gazing off the edge of the cliff again. They've drilled so far down, I can't see the bottom, but I can hear it: gears grinding and power tools squealing and phones ringing and all of it echoing down, down, down into the abyss. It's a wonder that everyone doesn't know about this bunker yet, just from all the noise these people are making. The doors must be sound proof, then, but what do they use for ventilation? Maybe an air recycler?

“Ready for flight,” I hear someone say.

Another quake hits down to the foundations of the base, and it's the worst one yet. The hanger shudders and dust falls from where the trap door meets the surface, but this time, the quake doesn't stop. It keeps going until the hinges on the door rattle and the bolts screech.

Someone shouts, “Get them aboard!” and two different people grab me under my arms and run, dragging me backwards onto the ship. Thea is dragged in right after me, fighting every step of the way, and then the doors close. I see people gathering at the top of the ramp, but off to the sides, and they look restless. I think they’re trying to evacuate, but this jet has to go first.

It's just as triangular in there as it is on the outside. The black seats are molded to the sides of the ship, and trapezoidal windows cover the walls. They might not be see-through from the outside, but they sure are on the inside. I watch the trapdoor bunker entrance rise, revealing the orange sky outside, and the people on the ramp lean toward it, casting glances at our ship.

Besides Thea and me, there are five other people in here besides the pilot: the two men that caught me by the arms and pulled me on board: the man Thea had given the bolt to, and a younger guy with blonde hair; the people who had pulled Thea into the ship: a very thin man with gray hair and a younger woman who’s fiddling with a tablet in her hands; and another woman who is sitting in the seat closest to the front and staring out the window closest to her. I read her name badge: Sareen.

The ship isn’t very big, but there’s a wall between us passengers and the pilot with a door on the far right side. There’s a line of locked drawers and cabinets attached to that wall, probably for storage, and red and orange lights on the ceiling, as well as pale yellow lights above us, in between our seats along the walls, and along the walkway on the floor. There's not much else in there, except the growling sound from the engine. The people in black buckle their seatbelts, and Thea and I do the same. The inside of the ship is mostly metal: built for function, not for comfort. But function it does, and quickly.

I feel the ship move forward, and I realize we're rolling up the ramp and out of the hangar. We take off, shooting into the sky with the power of jet engines behind us. My head is pushed back against the seat and air is squeezed out of my lungs.

 The two people next to us pay no attention to the immense pressure, and are looking at a hologram of the core, the same hologram I saw on the table in the president's office, to pinpoint the location of the trouble. We dive into the dark expanse between the cliffs, and the whole ship tilts, including us.

Sareen pulls out a drawer next to her that’s packed with ear plugs and goggles to protect our eyes.

“You're not going anywhere near the machine, but safety first, anyway,” she says to us. “It’s still super powerful, even with it malfunctioning right now.”

We take the glasses and earplugs from her hands. Thea holds the glasses by the stem and looks at them. They’re thicker than my regular glasses and wrap all the way around, and have a cushion on the inside that rests across the bridge of the nose and around the eyes. These are designed for high-impact. I put them on, and miraculously, they fit snug over my glasses and against my face like they were made for me. They must be made of the same stuff as my bike helmet.

“Just how powerful is it right now?” asks Thea as she slides the glasses on. Hers fit her, too, perfectly.

“Strong enough that without shields, we wouldn’t even be able to get close to it. But that won’t last long if we don’t get this bolt in place.”

“What do you think the chances are of this plan working?”

 “About three hundred and fifty to one.”

 I blink. “It's not that I don't _like_ those odds…” I say.

A mechanical voice sounds out from a speaker overhead. “Destination in thirty,” he says.

“Minutes?” asks Thea.

“Seconds.”

“How much time before it shuts down?” I ask.

“Not long. Hours at most, but it’ll only take minutes for the power to get low enough to cause lasting damage to the topside.”

“Hasn’t it already?” I ask.

“That’s nothing,” says Sareen. “The air core is the most important thing we have. Skyport depends on it like we depend on oxygen. It doesn’t just help people fly; it keeps the landforms from crashing into each other. It’s not for nothing the founders built the thing to hold up these asteroids.”

 We’re close to the center, now, and I look out the window at the machine that stretches off into the distance. It emits light of its own down here, dimly illuminating the color coded wires, and fading into spots, and then pinpricks farther down the machine.

The core is colorful up close, between the lights flashing on it and the red, yellow, green, black, and white wires that snake around its surface. I wouldn't be able to see the wires if they weren't in bundles strapped to the machine, because we’re still too far away from them. Switches and levers stick up next to intake and output vents, and I realize how sharp of an angle we must be at. The air is cut in half by the wings of our ship, and it’s directed above and below us instead of just blowing us away.

The man with the beard stands and picks his way to the door, holding onto the handrail the whole way there.

“We’ll come back and pick you up,” says Sareen.

“We can’t wait here for him?” asks Thea.

“No, this ship can’t hover. We’ll circle the cliffs and keep visual on him. He’ll be secured to the cliff, too. Anything bad happens, we’ll catch the rope and pull him up.”

 The man takes the rope and the shield and jumps out of the plane like he does it every day. He lands face-first on the rocky cliffside and holds on with his gloved fingertips. He pulls a metal device out of his utility belt, jams it into the cliff, and presses a button, and spikes shoot out of it and into the rock. He attaches the rope to the device and rappels down to the machine. Since the ship can’t hover, we pass by him and go around.

When we next see him, he’s at the machine holding up the shield like he’s facing dragon fire. With screwdriver in hand, he’s attacking the vent like he’s trying to stab it. All of the sudden, he lunges for something in the air below him, and I watch something shiny fly backwards past his arm and into the abyss.

He dropped it. He dropped the bolt.

Sareen presses on her ear where her ear plug is. “You'll have to climb back up and will start over with the next one,” she says. Her ear protection must double as a radio.

“Why can't one of us just climb down that rope?” I ask.

“I’ll do it,” says Thea.

“We’re too heavy. Our combined weight will pull the rope out of the wall.”

“I’m not too heavy,” I say. “I can climb down.”

“Or I can,” says Thea.

“I have experience fixing mechanical things,” I say. “I know I can repair the machine if all I have to do is replace a bolt.”

“No. We will not put you in that kind of danger.”

“We're already in danger. I'm light enough and we don't have time to go get him and try again.”

“Do you have the extra one?”

“It’s right here.” I pull the bolt out of my pocket and show her. She looks at the other people in the ship, who shrug. It’s okay with them, I guess.

She opens the door in the wall and says something to the pilot, then leans back in and closes it again.

“Get ready. We’re about to pass the drop-off site.”

I put the bolt back in my pocket, unbuckle my seatbelt, and stand up, holding onto the handrail so I don’t fall over. Sareen gives me a white rectangle with a handle on it. It looks like one of those old fashioned clothes irons.

“There’s a button on the handle,” she says. I press it, and a shiny, clear shield fans out from the device. “It will protect you from the wind.” I want to ask her how it works, but she’s rummaging through a cabinet full of clothes on hangars. She pulls out a thick fabric harness.

We’re getting really close to the drop-off site where the rope that the man had used to get to the machine is. Sareen and the young guy help me into the harness that goes around my chest and legs. There’s a thick metal clip in the center of it with a spring-loaded hinge.

“Attach this to the rope when you reach it,” the guy tells me.

“Okay.”

The last thing I’m given in gloves with spikes on the fingertips.

“Don’t scratch your nose with these,” says the guy. “They’ll stick to the rock when you land on it.

“You’re gonna jump and get as close to the rope as you can, and then latch yourself onto the rope with this.” He pulls on the metal clip on my harness. “Then you can zip down to Bill and give him the part.”

Bill. So that’s the man’s name. I don’t feel so good about leaving the plane while it’s not on the ground, but I have to get the bolt to Bill so he can fix the machine.

Sareen opens the hatch with the press of a button. “Go!” she shouts, barely audible above the roar of the wind. I jump, and aim toward the cliff face just above where the metal device links the rope to the rock.

I hit it with a thud, and the gloves grip exactly how I was told they would. I look around and see that I’m not far from the rope, and I climb over to it and hook the metal clip on my harness to the rope. I slide down the rope as far as I can, until the wind is pushing me backwards. Then I pull myself along, hand over hand, until I reach Bill.

I hand him the bolt and he screws it into place. Good. It’s all over, and everything’s going to be okay, now.

The ship passes right underneath us and I see a door in the top of it that I hadn’t noticed from the inside. Bill drops into it as it passes by, but there’s no time for me to do the same. I’ll catch it when the ship comes around again. I don't feel the air machine working yet, but I guess that's because it hasn't had time to kick in yet. But then I hear a rattling sound. I look down and see that the new bolt is gone; probably sucked back into the machine.

What do I do? There’s no time, the machine is failing, and nobody but me knows that it's still broken! The air’s still too strong for me to get close, so I hold the shield in the same hand I’m using to hold the rope, and activate it, which lessens, but doesn’t get rid of, the airflow. I climb down the rope to the broken machine and pull my multi-tool, the one I use to work on my bike, out of my pocket.

Focus. I lift up the screwdriver portion of the multi-tool and it locks into place. I grip it in my sweaty hand. The wind is blowing, but not nearly strong enough. In a few moments, it'll stop completely, and when the cliffs fall, I'll be smashed in between them.

I reach the part of the machine that's broken and look as closely as I can at it through the shield. There's a piece clanging around in there, and I think it’s the bolt. The vent screen has pulled loose, too, and is getting sucked into the machine. I can see a red wire beyond it, disconnected to its port. That must be where the piece goes to secure it in place.

I reach for the bolt, but the air forced out of the vent next to it pushes my hand over and around the vent. I have to get more leverage, but I can’t do that while also holding onto the rope.

I have to let go of the rope to get both of my hands on the machine, but I don’t want to let go of my lifeline. I try hooking the edge of the shield around the sharp corners beside the levers and pulling myself forward, but the shield keeps slipping. I deactivate it and tuck it inside my harness.

The wind tears at the skin on my face like it has claws. I let go of the rope and hold onto the broken machine instead. I pull with one hand and push with the other until I can get to the bolt. Got it!

I grab ahold of the wire next, and reattach it, and no sooner do I do that than I feel the machine thud, and something inside it kicks on and begins to hum. I can just barely hear it over the air rushing past me, which is getting louder by the second. I have to act fast. If I leave it as it is, it’ll just break loose again, and another disaster could happen. I screw in the bolt to secure it just before the fan kicks into high gear. It launches me off the platform and into the canyon between the cliffs, but it’s okay, because I’m attached to a rope, right?

As I flip through the air, I see something following me. It’s the rope I was tied to, free of the cliff and swimming through the air like a snake.

 

_Updates Mondays: BooksByLindsey.wordpress.com_


	12. Skyport

I hurtle towards a cliffside and I reach out to soften my impact. I hit it with my hands first, and then my face, and then my stomach. I'm so glad Sareen insisted that I wear these goggles. That would've hurt.

I get a grip on the handholds and hang on. Above me is blue sky, and below, the machine chugs along, just as smooth as it did the first time I'd seen it. Smoother, even.

I feel the grit of the handholds, and it feels familiar, even through the gloves. I have two choices now. I can stay here and wait for rescue, but I haven't seen the ship yet, so I assume they don't know where I am, and as far as they know I flew away and they probably don't know where to start looking for me. Still, staying would be the safest choice. The alternative is climbing up.

I look up again at the blue sky and feel the wind against my face, brushing through my hair.

I start the climb.

The climb feels shorter than it did last time, half because the machine pushed me really high up, and half because I'd already climbed a cliff like this before, so I know I can do it.

I reach the top and pull myself up and over the edge and lie down in the grass, exhausted, but happy. Happy I fixed the machine. Happy I made it to the top again. And happy that there isn't any more damage done by the machine breaking. The buildings are still standing, the trees still have branches that are waving in the breeze, and two pirate ships streak across the sky, followed by five police jets that now work again. Things are already getting back to normal.

The ship lands next to me and Thea runs out, followed by the crew.

"We saw what happened," says Thea.

"I'm soooo tired," I say.

"You're a hero!"

"A tired hero."

"You will be richly rewarded," says Sareen. "We will be in contact with you soon. Please don't mention any of this to anyone, especially about the bunker." The crew boards their ship again, and it flies away.

The thought of getting a new bike crosses my mind, but only for a second. I can't part with my bike, even if I have to keep replacing pieces of it. Maybe I could ask for money, and lockable storage shed, and a pilot's license when I get older. I feel like it's Christmas and we're about to open presents.

"What are you gonna ask for?" I ask Thea.

"I don't know," she says. "I'm going to have to think about it."

"Yeah, that's a good idea. Thinking about it." But money is definitely on my list. So is the license.

"What I really want," I say to Thea, "more than anything else, is a deep fried apple on a stick, but I have to wait until the fair rolls around next year to get one of those."

"You have fairs here? Real ones?"

"Yeah, don't you have those on Jupiter?"

"No! I've been missing out! Can you tell me about them?"

"Sure."

And I do.

Later, after everything calms down, I'm going to ask Thea for piloting tips. Maybe she can teach me a thing or two.

But looking at all the damage, I can see that it's going to take a while for things to get completely back to normal. Maybe they never will. Maybe there will always be some hint of what happened, and that might not be such a bad thing. Maybe people will find debris a hundred years from now and will remember, and it'll remind them to check on the new machine so a disaster like this doesn't happen again, or even inspire them find a better way to keep the world functioning.

And maybe—just maybe—it'll show them what a winglesskid can do when he's given the chance.


End file.
